"If these good things you see really do come, you know I don't want to share them alone," he said in a low voice, when she had finished.
She shook her head slowly. "The more I think, the more I see how unsuited I am for you. Our ideas are so different. You face one pole, I another. We would never pull together; we could only achieve the deadlock of two joined forces that struggle in opposite directions."
"But you know my hope is that we shall not always face in opposite directions."
She turned upon him a smile that was touched with irony. "You mean you expect some day to look toward my pole?"
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "You know I mean you will some day see the futility of such work as you are doing, and the wrongness of many of your ideas—and then you will turn to the true pole."
"Your pole? No. I do not believe, as you do, that only the fit should survive. I do not believe, as you do, that the hard conditions of life are necessary as a kind of sieve, or a kind of civil service examination, to separate the fit from the unfit. I do not believe, as you do, that the great mass who have failed to pass the meshes of this test, who are down, have by the mere fact of their being down proved their unfitness, shown that they are worthy to be neglected. Your belief, summed up, is that the world is made for the strong—for the rich man born to opportunities, and for the poor man born with the superior brains and energy to create them. To that belief I can never come. I believe the world is made also for the weak. Rather, I believe all should be made strong."
With a sweep of her hand she indicated the two rows of tenements whose dingy red walls stretched away and away till they and the narrow street disappeared into the wintry twilight.
"All these people here—they are weak because they have never had a chance to be otherwise. Give them a fair chance and they will become strong—or most of them. That is what I believe—a fair chance for all to become strong."
"And I believe the same. Only I believe that chance exists at present for all who are worthy. If there is good stuff in a man, he rises; if not, he belongs where he is. The struggle is selective, it develops. Make it easier and you lower the quality of your people."
"Ah, yes, I know you are an unalterable individualist," she sighed. "When I realise the great part you are going to have during the next twenty or thirty years in shaping the conditions under which we all must live, I wish you could be brought to a broader concept of the human relationship."