realization, were that possible. And what more do
you want of it? It has given you a theme for poetry. Let that content
you. But now I ask you to be, at last, a man of sobriety and
earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which is worth all our
strength, and the strength of a thousand mightier than we."

There can be no need of giving in detail the conversation that ensued.
It is enough to say that Hollingsworth once more brought forward his
rigid and unconquerable idea,--a scheme for the reformation of the
wicked by methods moral, intellectual, and industrial, by the sympathy
of pure, humble, and yet exalted minds, and by opening to his pupils
the possibility of a worthier life than that which had become their
fate. It appeared, unless he overestimated his own means, that
Hollingsworth held it at his choice (and he did so choose) to obtain
possession of the very ground on which we had planted our Community,
and which had not yet been made irrevocably ours, by purchase. It was
just the foundation that he desired. Our beginnings might readily be
adapted to his great end. The arrangements already completed would
work quietly into his system. So plausible looked his theory, and, more
than that, so practical,--such an air of reasonableness had he, by
patient thought, thrown over it,--each segment of it was contrived to
dovetail into all the rest with such a complicated applicability, and
so ready was he with a response for every objection, that, really, so
far as logic and argument went, he had the matter all his own way.

"But," said I, "whence can you, having no means of your own, derive the
enormous capital which is essential to this experiment? State Street,
I imagine, would not draw its purser strings very liberally in aid of
such a speculation."

"I have the funds--as much, at least, as is needed for a
commencement--at command," he answered. "They can be produced within a
month, if necessary."

My thoughts reverted to Zenobia. It could only be her wealth which
Hollingsworth was appropriating so lavishly. And on what conditions
was it to be had? Did she fling it into the scheme with the
uncalculating generosity that characterizes a woman when it is her
impulse to be generous at all? And did she fling herself along with
it? But Hollingsworth did not volunteer an explanation.

"And have you no regrets," I inquired, "in overthrowing this fair
system of our new life, which has been planned so deeply, an