"I should like it. I should like nothing better."
"You have been in Europe?"
"Oh, yes, for a year at a time. Three times in all."
"Lately?"
"No. The last time I was very young."
"You will see things with different eyes."
He seemed to be promising her something, in the fervor of his speech.
Some one had said of him once that, in talking to women, he always said
"you" as if it meant "you and I." It may not have been to women alone.
Young men felt that in the reconstruction of the earth it would not be
merely MacLeod who led the van, but MacLeod and each one of them.
"I should like," she dared, "to see the things you are doing. I should
like to know--the Brotherhood."
"You shall know it. There are as many women in it as men. When the
starving citizens marched up to Paris to ask King Louis for bread, the
women's voices were loudest, I fancy. There is no distinction in our
membership. Men and women serve alike."
"When could I join it?"
"Not too fast, dear lady." He was smiling at her. That warm tone of
personal consideration soothed her through the dusk. "It involves
hardship, the laying down of self. Are you ready for that?"
"I am ready," said Electra. Her heart beat high. At last life seemed
large enough and rich enough to satisfy her.
"Your entire allegiance and a tenth of your income," he went on. "Do not
pledge it unless you can keep the pledge."
"I promise. I pledge it, myself and all I have."
In her uplifted state, it seemed as if some spell had been laid upon
her, and she sought to recall her lost composure. The occasion, she
knew, was a very large one, and she must not, she earnestly thought,
deprive it of dignity. He rose.
"Stand up," he said; and she also was upon her feet, with a swift
compliance. "Give me your hand." She laid her hand in his. "Do you
believe in the Brotherhood of Man?"