You will have
discovered that doing the world's work even well is a thankless job, and
that fame and success are the husks that swine do eat compared with even
the tears and griefs of love. But you will not be lovable then, Selah;
you will only be horribly intelligent and capable. I can see that, the
way you are tending now. You will have gray hair, thin, too. You will
draw it back like a conviction, and wind it in a knot at the back of
your head as tight as a narrow-minded conclusion. You will have lost the
damask flush of youth. I think your cheek bones will stick up, too
prominent, you know, as if your character had knobbed up under your
eyes. There will be a staircase of political wrinkles upon your
forehead. Your eyes---- Oh, my God! I cannot bear the vision I see of
you, with your eyes showing like gray stones casting eddies of wrinkles!
And you'll be lank, the skeleton left by the passing of a great and
successful movement undertaken for the emancipation of woman!"

"And if I married you, how should I look at forty?" asked Selah with
shrewish shrewdness.

"Oh, my beloved, I don't know. I should not know even then. You would be
my wife, the mother of my children--as sacred as that--the memory of my
youth distilled, the citadel of my mature years, the alabaster box of my
hopes and faith in the life to come! I couldn't see you at all, Selah,
for you would have become everything to me, and a man can't see or
foretell that much."

She looked at him, her eyes shining behind her tears like distant
windows of light through the rain on a dark night. How could she keep
faith with the Cause of Woman while the Cause of Man stood before her so
gallantly portrayed!

"Bob," she whispered, "I--you are so dear. You cannot know how dear you
are to me. I've just found out myself, but----"

"But what?" he cried impatiently.

"You must wait. I can't, I just can't give you my whole heart now. It
seems to have gone from me, some fierce energy of life. I've got to do
this thing that we've set out to do before I can promise, before I'll
know myself."

"Well, for God's sake, hurry then and do it," he answered, not pleased.

"You'll help, won't you?" she asked softly.

"There are times when I fear I'd help you commit murder if the victim
stood between us, Selah, but really I don't know how I can help you win
this fight for suffrage in Jordan County. The whole thing seems so far
fetched. I can't see what you are driving at. You