"What would you expect him to do—join in, and be just like the others?
Where would any good come out of anything?"
"Now, you are insisting again that there is good only on one side of the question. That's bigotry. It's what I'm trying to warn you against. Some one has said that life is compromise. It's true of politics, if you're going to get the most out of it. I know what you are undertaking. General Waymouth hasn't left much to the imagination in his letter. And I've talked with others. And so I know how visionary you are."
"You've talked with Linton—that's the one you've talked with!" declared Harlan, indignantly. "And if he's told you what I have told him in confidence he's more of a sneak than I've already found him out to be."
"Mr. Linton did not consider that you were making any secret of your principles. And you'll excuse me, but I think his principles are exactly as good as yours. You are talking now like the ramrodders. Their first retort to any one who differs with them is to call names."
"But he deserted General Waymouth under fire. He promised, and went back on that promise."
"According to all political good sense and in any other times but these, when men seem to be running wild, General Waymouth was politically out of the game. It's all fine and grand in story-books, Mr. Thornton, for the hero to sacrifice everything for his ideals, but in these very practical days he's only classed as a fool and kicked to one side."
"You defend Linton, then? Is that the kind of a man you hold up as a success, Miss Presson?" His grudge showed in his tone.
"You will please understand, sir, that we are not discussing theories just now. This isn't a question of what the world ought to be. It's the plain fact about what a man must be if he's to get results. You and I both have heard your grandfather say many times that he'd like to play politics with angels—if only he could find the angels. It's hard to own up, when you're young, that human nature is just as it is. I understand how you feel. I know you feel it's a very strange thing for me to do—talk to you like this. But I want you to understand that my father has had nothing to do with it."
He turned to her accusingly.
"But I know perfectly well," he said, bitterly, "that it isn't any personal interest you take in me that makes you say it. You don't think enough of me for that." It was resentment so naively boyish that her astonishment checked her remonstrance. He rushed on. "You hold up Linton for me to follow. That's the kind of a man you admire. He's an orator, and he's smart, and he wins. I'm only an accident. You meant that when you said that General Waymouth won out only because matters were mixed up in politics. You don't care anything about me, personally. But you're talking to me because my grandfather asked you to. That's it." He guessed shrewdly.