But to Alice it was God-like, a thing to stand uncovered before. His remedies might be all wrong. Probably they were. None the less his vital courage for life took her by the throat.
Jeff nodded at the invalid cheerfully. “We're going to change all that, Oscar. Into this little old world a new soul is being born. Or perhaps the old soul is being born again.”
The Socialist caught at this swiftly. “Yes, we're going to change this terrible waste of human lives. I see a new world, where men will live like brothers and not like wolves rending each other. There poverty will be blotted out... and disease and all mean and cruel things that hamper and destroy life. Law and justice will walk hand in hand through a land of peace and plenty. Our cities, the expression of our social life, will be clean and sunny and beautiful because the lives of the common people are so. There strong men and deep-breasted women will work for the joy of working, since all is for the common good. Their children will be free and happy and well fed... yes, and equal to each other. From that highly socialized state, because it is tied together by love, will come that restrained freedom which is the most perfect individualism.”
The nurse forced him gently back upon the pillows. “There! You've talked enough to-day.”
He lay coughing, a hectic flush above the high cheek bones. Presently, at a look from the nurse, his guests departed.
Outside the building Miller left the rest abruptly. Flanked by the two cousins, Alice crossed Yarnell Way back to that world to which she had always belonged.
James laid down the law to her concerning the folly of such excursions into the unconventional. Alice listened. She discovered that his viewpoint was exactly like that of Ned Merrill. Any deviation from the conventional was a mistake. Any attempt to escape from existing conditions was a form of treason. Trade, property, business, respectability, good form; these were the shibboleth they worshipped. It was just because she did not want to believe this of James Farnum that she had taken him with her to call on Marchant. It was in a sense a test, and he was answering it by showing himself complacently callous and hidebound.
Surely he had not always been like this, a smug and well-clad Pharisee, afraid to look at the truth. In those early days, when they had been friends, with the possibility of being a good deal more, there had been an impetuous touch of ardor she could no longer find. Her cool glance ran down his figure. The man was taking on flesh, the plump well-fed look of one who has escaped moral conduct by giving up the fight. Fat cushioned the square jaw and detracted from its strength. For the first time she observed a hardening of the eye. The visible deterioration of an inner collapse was being writ on him.
Alice sighed. After all she might have spared herself the trouble. He had chosen his path and he must follow it.
At the corner of Powers Avenue and Van Ault Street James left them. It was natural that the talk should revert to Marchant.