He held her to him for what seemed a long while. There was strength in his arms, in spite of the bowed shoulders and white hair. “You are a wicked God,” Joan told Him. “Yes, You are. A cruel, wicked God.”!

“I’ll give him your message,” said Joan. “But I don’t see him exchanging his principles even for your support. I admit it’s important.” “You mean it?” said Flossie. “Of course you will go on seeing him—visiting them, and all that. But you won’t go gadding about, so that people can talk?”

It was utterly illogical; but her interest in the principles of Social Democracy was gone. “I suppose it would mean stagnation,” admitted Madge. “And yet I don’t know. Are there not forces moving towards right that are crying to us to help them, not by violence, which only interrupts—delays them, but by quietly preparing the way for them? You know what I mean. Erasmus always said that Luther had hindered the Reformation by stirring up passion and hate.” She broke off suddenly. There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, if God would only say what He wants of us,” she almost cried; “call to us in trumpet tones that would ring through the world, compelling us to take sides. Why can’t He speak?” He thought it the tragedy of the world that Rome had conquered Greece, imposing her lower ideals upon the race. Rome should have been the servant of Greece: the hands directed by the brain. She would have made roads and harbours, conducted the traffic, reared the market place. She knew of the steam engine, employed it for pumping water in the age of the Antonines. Sooner or later, she would have placed it on rails, and in ships. Rome should have been the policeman, keeping the world in order, making it a fit habitation. Her mistake was in regarding these things as an end in themselves, dreaming of nothing beyond. From her we had inherited the fallacy that man was made for the world, not the world for man. Rome organized only for man’s body. Greece would have legislated for his soul.