It was the bombastic sophistry again, Stephen told himself, but he met
it without subterfuge or evasion. "And you believe that such people as
Gershom can serve the cause of justice through dishonest means?" he
demanded.

"I'll answer that some day; but it's a long answer, and I can't speak it
out here in the cold," responded the Governor, while his blustering
manner grew sober. "Gershom is a politician, you see, and I am not. You
may laugh, but it is the Gospel truth. I am a reformer, and all I care
about is pushing on the idea. I use any tools that I find; and one of
the greatest of reformers has said that he was sometimes obliged to use
bad ones. If I find good ones, so much the better; if bad--well, it is
all in the day's job. But the cause is what matters--the thing you are
making, not the implements with which it is made. You dislike my methods
of work, but you must admit that by the only test that counts, the test
of achievement, they have proved to be sound. I have got somewhere; not
all the way; but still somewhere. Without advertisement, without
patronage, without a cent I could call my own, I put my wares on the
market. I became Governor of Virginia in spite of everything you did, or
did not do, to prevent it." There was a strange effectiveness in the
simplicity of the man's speech. It was natural; it was racy; it was like
nothing that Stephen had ever heard before. He wondered if it could be
traced back to the phraseology of the circus? "Of course you think I am
an extremist," concluded Gideon Vetch abruptly, "but before you are as
old as I am you will have learned that the only way to get half a loaf
is to ask for a whole one. Come again, and I'll talk to you."

"Yes, I'll come again," Stephen answered, and he knew that he should.
Whether he willed it or not he would be drawn back by the Governor's
irresistible influence. The man had aroused in him an intense, a