"What a successful politician you would have made? You would
have had such a winning way to the hearts of the great unwashed!"

Mrs. Howth laid down her knitting.

"My dear," she said, timidly, "I think that is treason."

The angry heat died out of his face instantly, as he turned to
her, without the glimmer of a covert smile at her simplicity.
She was a woman; and when he spoke to the Doctor, it was in a
tone less sharp.

"What is it the boys used to declaim, their Yankee hearts
throbbing under their round-aborts? `Happy, proud America!'
Somehow in that way. `Cursed, abased America!' better if they
had said. Look at her, in the warm vigour of her youth, most
vigorous in decay! Look at the germs and dregs of nations,
creeds, religions, fermenting together! As for the theory of
self-government, it will muddle down here, as in the three great
archetypes of the experiment, into a paling, miserable failure!"

The Doctor did not hear. Some sharper shadow seemed to haunt him
than the downfall of the Republic. What help did he seek in this
girl? His keen, deep eyes never left her unconscious face.

"No," Mr. Howth went on, having the field to himself,--"we left
Order back there in the ages you call dark, and Progress will
trumpet the world into the ditch."

"Comte!" growled the Doctor.