She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to interrupt Graham’s eloquence.... But his doubts and questionings fled before her presence. He remembered the things that he had meant to say. He faced the cameras again and the light about him grew brighter. He turned back to her.
“You have helped me,” he said lamely—“helped me very much.... This is very difficult.”
He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.
“Men and women of the new age,” he said; “you have arisen to do battle for the race!... There is no easy victory before us.”
He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of moving speech.
“This night is a beginning,” he said. “This battle that is coming, this battle that rushes upon us to-night, is only a beginning. All your lives, it may be, you must fight. Take no thought though I am beaten, though I am utterly overthrown. I think I may be overthrown.”
He found the thing in his mind too vague for words. He paused momentarily, and broke into vague exhortations, and then a rush of speech came upon him. Much that he said was but the humanitarian commonplace of a vanished age, but the conviction of his voice touched it to vitality. He stated the case of the old days to the people of the new age, to the girl at his side.
“I come out of the past to you,” he said, “with the memory of an age that hoped. My age was an age of dreams—of beginnings, an age of noble hopes; throughout the world we had made an end of slavery; throughout the world we had spread the desire and anticipation that wars might cease, that all men and women might live nobly, in freedom and peace.... So we hoped in the days that are past. And what of those hopes? How is it with man after two hundred years?
“Great cities, vast powers, a collective greatness beyond our dreams. For that we did not work, and that has come. But how is it with the little lives that make up this greater life? How is it with the common lives? As it has ever been—sorrow and labour, lives cramped and unfulfilled, lives tempted by power, tempted by wealth, and gone to waste and folly. The old faiths have faded and changed, the new faith—. Is there a new faith?
“Charity and mercy,” he floundered; “beauty and the love of beautiful things—effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself—as Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand. It does not matter if you seem to fail. You know—in the core of your hearts you know. There is no promise, there is no security—nothing to go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith—faith which is courage....”