"Everything, because they are the most earnest workers of all. But they have seen that Prohibition has proved itself an impossibility. They have failed despite their whole-hearted and worthy endeavours. Naturally they have become disheartened. But they are beginning to see the truth of our proposal. The scientific method is gaining ground as they realise it more and more. In a year or two those states which legislated Prohibition, will legislate in another way and penalise the begetting of children by known drunkards. That seems to me certain. After that the whole land may, I pray God, follow suit."
She had taken off her heavy sable coat and was sitting in a chair by the fireside. Informed with deep feeling and that continuous spring of hope and confidence which gave her so much of her power, the deep contralto rang like a bell in the room.
Morton Sims leant against the mantel-shelf and looked down on his friend. The face was beautiful and inspired. It represented the very flower of intellect and patriotism, breadth, purity, strength. "Ah!" he thought, "the figure of Britannia upon our coins and in our symbolic pictures, or the Latin Dame of Liberty with the Phrygian cap, is not so much England or France as this woman is America, the soul of the West in all its power and beauty. . . ."
His reverie was broken in upon by her voice, not ringing with enthusiasm now, but sad and purely womanly.
"Tell me," she was saying, "have you heard or found out anything of Gilbert Lothian, the poet?"
Morton Sims shook his head.
"It remains an impenetrable mystery," he said. "No one knows anything."
Tears came into Mrs. Daly's eyes. "I loved that woman," she said. "I loved Mary Lothian. A clearer, more transparent soul never joined the saints in Paradise. Among the many, many things for which I have to thank you, there is nothing I have valued more than the letter from you which sent me to her at Nice. Mary Lothian was the sweetest woman I have ever met, or ever shall meet. Sometimes God puts such women into the world for examples. Her death grieved me more than I can say."
"It was very sudden."
"Terribly. We travelled home together. She was leaving her dying sister in the deepest sadness. But she was going home full of holy determination to save her husband. I never met any woman who loved a man more than Mary Lothian loved Gilbert Lothian. What a wonderful man he must have been, might have been, if the Disease had not ruined him. I think his wife would have saved him had she lived. He is alive, I suppose?"