by
unselfish study. You cannot create a statesman by the mere toss of a
coin at a political meeting. Though people fitted to rule and lead men
to build mighty nations are sometimes born in obscurity, they cannot
develop there.

"But I meant rightly--I meant rightly. In my ignorance I have played
with a sharp-edged weapon, and it is turning upon me and--civilisation."

"How?" I queried.

"A cataclysm is coming," he said. "I can feel it. No, it will not be
within Asia, as many people fear, but within Europe.

"The hasty structure of Humanism cannot stand. Even now it is toppling.
It is going to crash, and from the ruins another creed will rise, a
creed, I trust, more rational.

"I was passing home, so came to tell you."

Then Madame came down the track.

Wilbrid rose as she approached. His hand shook as he removed his black
broad-brimmed hat. They stood before each other for a moment without a
word.

For the first time, these leaders faced each other. Then Wilbrid bent
his head.

"You have won," he said. "You have won."

"It took you some time to find that out," she remarked, with a trembling
voice. "I could have told you that soon after you began. You cried for
the destruction of the very things that have made the world progress.
You aimed to destroy individuality and you did so--but only with your
own class.

"You have preached that all wealth is the result of labor, but now you
have realised that intelligent supervision is required to make labor
effective, and that brains are just as necessary to the world's
prosperity as is manual toil.

"You went out to reform society and level down; and your party no sooner
won some power than your women-folk tried to form a "social set" of
their own--you don't know women. You are as ignorant of their desires as
you are of your own. You do not know it is woman's instinct to be
something more than a drab. There is more of the divine spark in the
woman than in the man. It should be so with the producers of men. She
yearns for uplift, even if it be the sneered-at "society" you sought to
crush.

"You have only to note how, when Socialist politicians in any country
win any power, their wives crowd each other into those circles of
society, that husbands had won notoriety by attacking as "loafing on the
workers."

"You have only to note the social columns of the daily press of those
countries to see how anxious these wives of Socialist members are to
have their names i