“You have a great many friends, have you not?” she said.
“Yes, very many. A man cannot have too many of the right sort.”
“I do not think you and I mean the same thing by friendship,” said Joe. “I should say one cannot have too few.”
“I mean friends who will help you at the right moment, that is, when you ask help. Surely it must be good to have many.”
“Everything that you do and say always turns to one and the same end,” said Joe, a little impatiently. “The one thing you live for is power and the hope of power. Is there nothing in the world worth while save that?”
“Power itself is worth nothing. It is the thing one means to get with it that is the real test.”
“Of course. But tell me, is anything you can obtain by all the power the world holds better than the simple happiness of natural people, who are born and live good lives, and–fall in love, and marry, and that sort of thing, and are happy, and die?” Joe looked down and turned the leaf she held in her fingers, as she stated her proposition.
John Harrington paused before he answered. A moment earlier he had been as calm and cold as he was wont to be; now, he suddenly hesitated. The strong blood rushed to his brain and beat furiously in his temples, and then sank heavily back to his heart, leaving his face very pale. His fingers wrung each other fiercely for a moment. He looked away at the trees; he turned to Josephine Thorn; and then once more he gazed at the dark foliage, motionless in the hot air of the summer’s afternoon.
“Yes,” he said, “I think there are things much better than those in the world.” But his voice shook strangely, and there was no true ring in it.
Joe sighed again.