with me and that it was up to me to make the sacrifice good to you by
giving you power--position. Already within the last few weeks, when it
looked as if this thing was going to be possible, I have been thinking
against my will of a compromise with Carleton that would give me his
support. This coming election was beginning to have terrors for me that
I have never before felt. The thought of defeat--having to go back to
comparative poverty, to comparative obscurity, with you as my wife, was
growing into a nightmare. I should have wanted wealth, fame, victory,
for your sake--to see you honoured, courted, envied, finely dressed and
finely housed--grateful to me for having won for you these things. It
wasn't honest, healthy love--the love that unites, that makes a man
willing to take as well as to give, that I felt for you; it was worship
that separates a man from a woman, that puts fear between them. It isn't
good that man should worship a woman. He can't serve God and woman.
Their interests are liable to clash. Nan's my helpmate--just a loving
woman that the Lord brought to me and gave me when I was alone--that I
still love. I didn't know it till last night. She will never stand in
my way. I haven't to put her against my duty. She will leave me free to
obey the voice that calls to me. And no man can hear that voice but
himself."

He had been speaking in a clear, self-confident tone, as if at last he
saw his road before him to the end; and felt that nothing else mattered
but that he should go forward hopefully, unfalteringly. Now he paused,
and his eyes wandered. But the lines about his strong mouth deepened.

"Perhaps, I am not of the stuff that conquerors are made," he went on.
"Perhaps, if I were, I should be thinking differently. It comes to me
sometimes that I may be one of those intended only to prepare the
way--that for me there may be only the endless struggle. I may have to
face unpopularity, abuse, failure. She won't mind."

"Nor would you," he added, turning to her suddenly for the first time, "I
know that. But I should be afraid--for you."

She had listened to him without interrupting, and even now she did not
speak for a while.

It was hard not to. She wanted to tell him that he was all wrong--at
least, so far as she was concerned. It. was not the conqueror she loved
in him; it was the fighter. Not in the hour of triumph but in the hour
of despair she would have yearned to put her arm