“How is history going to get us out of the mess you’ve landed us in, for example?” she continued, as Henry Wolverton made no attempt to answer her. “How is history, alone, going to help us presently to start everything afresh on a new basis? You must know, yourself, that it’s no good trying to get back to the old way of doing things. That could only mean, by your own showing, that we should just be preparing the way for all this to happen again.”
Henry Wolverton threw up his hands with a gesture of despair.
“But if I admit that you’re right,” he said, “I have to face the conclusion that I’ve wasted my whole life.”
“Well, in a way, I’m afraid you have, rather,” Susan admitted. “It’s a great pity, for instance, about this revolution of yours. It means such a lot of blood and disorder; and people do get so out of hand when there’s fighting going on. Now if the owners and the middle-classes hadn’t been so cocksure, and had given way, we could have started in on our new methods of government without any bother.”
She paused a moment, before she added,
“We’ve got it all worked out, you know, but, of course, I can’t tell you anything about it, yet.”
“I am, in fact, what you would call a back-number,” Henry Wolverton said.
Susan puckered her forehead. “I think there’s still a hope for you,” she remarked.
“After all these years?” he asked.
“If you’d let me take you in hand for a bit,” she said. “You seem willing to learn.”