“Not if one is a good loser. We lose and make another start.”
“But if success is a battle, it must be gained at the expense of another.”
“Sometimes. But you must look at it in a big way.” The secretary of the trust magnate had come in and was in low-toned conversation with him. The visitor led her to the nearest window and drew back the curtains so that they looked down on the lusty life of the turbid young city, at the lights in the distant smelters and mills, at the great hill opposite, with its slagdumps, gallows-frames and shaft-houses black against the dim light, which had yielded its millions and millions of tons of ore for the use of mankind. “All this had to be fought for. It didn’t grow of itself. And because men fought for it, the place is what it is. Sixty thousand people live here, fed by the results of the battle. The highest wages in the world are paid the miners here. They live in rough comfort and plenty, whereas in the countries they came from they were underpaid and underfed. Is that not good?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Life for you and for me must be different, thank God. You are in the world to make for the happiness of those you meet. That is good. But unless I am to run away from my work, what I do must make some unhappy. I can’t help that if I am to do big things. When you hear people talking of the harm I do, you will remember what I have told you to-night, and you will think that a man and his work cannot be judged by isolated fragments.”
“Yes,” she breathed softly, for she knew that this man was saying good-by to her and was making his apologia.
“And you will remember that no matter how bitter the fight may grow between me and Mr. Harley, it has nothing to do with you. We shall still be friends, though we may never meet again.”
“I shall remember that, too,” he heard her murmur.
“You have been hoping that Mr. Harley and I would be friends. That is impossible. He came out here to crush me. For years his subordinates have tried to do this and failed. I am the only man alive that has ever resisted him successfully. I don’t underestimate his power, which is greater than any czar or emperor that ever lived, but I don’t think he will succeed. I shall win because I understand the forces against me. He will lose because he scorns those against him.”
“I am sorry. Oh, I am so sorry,” she wailed, gently as a breath of summer wind. For she saw now that the cleavage between them was too wide for a girl’s efforts to bridge.