r opinions that have crystallized into
prejudices. The truth is that the end for which I work seems to me
vastly more important than the methods I use or the instruments that I
employ."

It was the familiar chicanery of the popular leader, the justification
of expediency, that Stephen had always found most repugnant as a
political theory; and while he drew back, repelled and disgusted, he
asked himself if the national conscience, the moral integrity of the
race, was in the keeping of demagogues?

"I am curious to know," he remarked after a moment, "how you are able to
justify the sacrifice of what I regard as common honesty in public
affairs?"

To his surprise, instead of answering directly, Vetch put a personal
question. "Then you think I am not honest? Darrow wouldn't agree with
you."

At this Darrow turned from the window. "Perhaps he doesn't mean what we
do," he said quietly. "I've seen honest men that I knew ought to have
been in prison."

"I am speaking of course of the doctrines you advocate," answered
Stephen. "That seems to me to be, in the jargon of the reformer,
somewhat unethical. Can you, I question, achieve anything important
enough to compensate for what you sacrifice?"

Darrow turned again with his dry laugh. "You speak as if public honesty,
by which I reckon you mean clean elections and unsold offices, were
something we had actually possessed," he said.

"Oh, I know the old proceedings were bad enough," replied Stephen, "but
I am trying to find out how the Governor expects to make them better.
You understand that I am trying merely to see your point of view--to get
at the roots of your theory of government. What you tell me will never
find its way to the public."

"I realize that," said Vetch gravely, and he added with a quick glance
at Darrow: "Do you think if I were not honest that I'd talk to you so
frankly?"

Stephen smiled. "It might be. The political coat has many colours. I
don't mean to be rude, you know, but one good turn in frankness deserves
another."

"I like you the better for that." A cluster of fine lines appeared at
the corners of the Governor's laughing eyes. "But, once for all, you
must get rid of your false impressions of me, and see me as a fact, not
as a kind of social scarecrow. First of all, you think I am an
extremist--well, I am not. I am merely a man of facts. I see the world
as it is and you see it as you wish it to be--that is the difference
between us. I have