"Why?" she asked.
"A huge organisation which is international requires the most careful arrangement—secret but potent."
"The organisation exists in outline."
"Propaganda work."
"It has been going on for years. Even such work as you have been doing has been preparing the way for greater things."
"Money—millions of money!" he cried. "Don't you see? It's easy to talk of leading the people, but difficult to accomplish—impossible, in fact, in a highly organised country like this."
"Give me your consent—tell me you will consent to lead us, and I will show you that this is already done. Even now a million British soldiers are ready—ready with arms and accoutrements!"
Again she pleaded, again she fired his imagination! Fact after fact she related of what had been done, and of what could be done. It needed, she said, but the strong man to appear, and the poor, the suffering from every byway, would flock to his standard.
"But don't you see?" cried Dick, half bewildered and altogether dazzled by the witchery of her words. "If I were to respond to your call, you would be placing not only an awful responsibility upon me, but a terrible power in my hands?"
"Yes, I do see!" she cried; "and I glory in the thought. Look here, my friend, I have been pleading with you not for your own sake, but for the sake of others—for the redemption of the world. But all along I have thought of you—you. It is right that you should think of yourself. Every man should be anxious about his own career. This is right. We cannot go against the elementary truths of life. There must be the leaders as well as the led. And leadership means power, fame! Every strong man longs for power, fame, position. You do, my friend. For years you have been craving after it, and it is your right, your eternal right. And here is the other ground of my appeal, my friend. Such a position, such fame, such power is offered you as was never offered to any man before. To be a leader of the world! To focus, to make real the visions, longings, hopes of unnumbered millions. To make vocal, to translate into reality all the world has been sighing for—striving after. Great God! What a career! What a position!"