“A hundred thousand! Some time, before long, it will be a million; then two, five, twenty, a hundred, with no racial discords, no mutual antipathies, no barriers of name or blood; but for the first time a universal race, all sound and pure, starting right, living right, striving toward a goal which even we cannot foresee!
“Not only shall this land be filled, but Europe, Asia, Africa and all the islands of the Seven Seas shall know the hand of man again, and own his sovereignty, from pole to pole!”
His clasp about Beatrice tightened; she felt his heart beat strong with deep emotion as he spoke again:
“Already the cities are beginning to arise from their ashes of a thousand oblivious years. Already a score of thriving colonies have scattered from the capital, all yet bound to it with monorail cables, with electric wires and with the ether-borne magic of the wireless.
“Already our boy, our son--can you imagine him really a man of thirty, darling?--elected President on our last Council Day, guides a free people--a people self-reliant and strong, energetic, capable, dominant.
“Already the inconceivable fertility of the earth is yielding its bounties a hundred fold; and trade-routes circle the ends of the great Abyss; and all the vast territory once the United States has begun to open again before the magic touch of man!
“Of man--now free at last! No more slavery! No more the lash of hunger driving men to their tasks. No more greed and grasping; no lust of gold, no bitter cry of crushed and hopeless serfdom! No buying and selling for the lure of profit; no speculating in the people's means of life; no squeezing of their blood for wealth! But free, strong labor, gladly done. The making of useful and beautiful things, Beatrice, and their exchange for human need and service--this, and the old dream of joy in righteous toil, this is the blessing of our world to-day!”
He paused. A little, swift-moving light upon the far horizon drew his eye. It seemed a star, traveling among its sister stars that now already had begun to twinkle palely in the darkening sky. But Allan knew its meaning.
“Look!” cried he and pointed. “Look, Beatrice! The West Coast Mail--the plane from southern California. The wireless told us it had started only three hours ago--and here it is already!”
“And but for you,” she murmured, “none of all this could ever possibly have been. Oh, Allan, remember that song--our song? In the days of our first love, there on the Hudson, remember how I sang to you: