“Any one I know. Every one knows some one. I don’t mean to say that I’m a
Joan of Arc; but I shall do what I can.”
“And how shall you begin?”
“I’ll begin with father and with—”
She stopped at the second name, though to me the fact did not become
significant till afterward.
“That’s what I meant,” she resumed, “when I said I was going back on his
account.”
“You mean?”
“He doesn’t see why we should be in it. He’s like so many Americans; he
hasn’t emerged from the eighteen-hundreds. He still thinks of the New
World as if it was a new creation that had nothing to do with the Old.
He doesn’t see that there’s only one world and one race of men, wherever
they are and whatever they do. To him Americans are like souls that get
over to paradise. They’re safe and can afford to dwell safely. They’re
no longer concerned with the sorrows and struggles of the people left on
earth.”
It was to get light on my own way that I asked, “And what are you going
to say to convince him?”
“I don’t know yet. I shall say what the moment suggests.”
“And you’re sure it will suggest something?”
Her great eyes burned like coals as she turned them on me in protest at
the question.
“Suggest something? You might as well ask if the air suggests something.
It suggests that I breathe it; but I don’t have to think of it
beforehand, when the whole world is full of it.”
“Full of what?”
She considered the question, finding in it all I meant to put there.
“I don’t know,” she answered at last. “That is, I don’t know in any sense
that would go into a few words. There’s so much of it. The minute you try
to express it from any one point of view you find you’re inadequate.”