leader after all is your party
leader, isn't he, and if he says 'no' what are you to do? My sympathies
are just as keen for these poor women and children as ever, but as these
men say, 'charity begins at home,' and we mustn't do anything to bring
on war prices again, or to send stocks tumbling about our heads, must
we?" He leaned back in his chair again and sighed. "Sympathy is an
expensive luxury, I find," he added.

Arkwright rose stiffly and pushed Stanton away from him with his hand.
He moved like a man coming out of a dream.

"Don't talk to me like that," he said in a low voice. The noise about
the table ended on the instant, but Arkwright did not notice that it had
ceased. "You know I don't understand that," he went on; "what does it
matter to me!" He put his hand up to the side of his face and held it
there, looking down at Stanton. He had the dull, heavy look in his eyes
of a man who has just come through an operation under some heavy drug.
"'Wall Street,' 'trusts,' 'party leaders,'" he repeated, "what are they
to me? The words don't reach me, they have lost their meaning, it is a
language I have forgotten, thank God!" he added. He turned and moved his
eyes around the table, scanning the faces of the men before him.

"Yes, you are twelve to one," he said at last, still speaking dully and
in a low voice, as though he were talking to himself. "You have won a
noble victory, gentlemen. I congratulate you. But I do not blame you, we
are all selfish and self-seeking. I thought I was working only for Cuba,
but I was working for myself, just as you are. I wanted to feel that it
was I who had helped to bring relief to that plague-spot, that it was
through my efforts the help had come. Yes, if he had done as I asked, I
suppose I would have taken the credit."

He swayed slightly, and to steady himself caught at the back of his
chair. But at the same moment his eyes glowed fiercely and he held
himself erect again. He pointed with his finger at the circle of great
men who sat looking up at him in curious silence.

"You are like a ring of gamblers around a gaming table," he cried
wildly, "who see nothing but the green cloth and the wheel and the piles
of money before them, who forget in watching the money rise and
fall, that outside the sun is shining, that human beings are sick and
suffering, that men are giving their lives for an idea, for a sentiment,
for a flag. You are the money-changers in the temple of this great