“And love!” she whispered.
“And hope, and life! And the earth reborn. The arts and sciences, language and letters, truth, ‘all the glories of the world’ handed down through us!
“Listen! The race of men, our race, must live again--shall live! Again the forests and the plains shall be the conquest of our blood. Once more shall cities gleam and tower, ships sail the sea, and the world go on to greater wisdom, better things!
“A kinder and a saner world this time. No misery, no war, no poverty, woe, strife, creeds, oppression, tears--for we are wiser than those other folk, and there shall be no error.”
He paused, his face irradiate. To him recurred the prophecy of Ingersoll, the greatest orator of that other time. And very slowly he spoke again:
“Beatrice, it shall be a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness shall reign no more! A world without a slave. Man shall at last be free!
“‘A world at peace, adorned by every form of art, with music's myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth. A world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet's shadow shall not fall.
“‘A race without disease of flesh or brain, shapely and fair, the wedded harmony of form and function. And as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, and over all in the great dome shines the eternal star of human hope!’”
“And love?” she smiled again, a deep and sacred meaning in her words. Within her stirred the universal motherhood, the hope of everything, the call of the unborn, the insistent voice of the race that was to be.
“And love!” he answered, his voice now very tender, very grave.