e
brush and tarred with selfishness. What the oppressed want is not
freedom from oppression, but the opportunity to become oppressors."

Was this only a mood, she wondered, or was it the expression of a
profound disappointment? Sympathy such as John Benham had never awakened
overflowed from her heart, and she was conscious suddenly of some deep
intuitive understanding of Vetch's nature. All that had been alien or
ambiguous became as close and true and simple as the thoughts in her own
mind. What she saw in Vetch, she perceived now, was that resemblance to
herself which the Judge had once turned into a jest. She discerned his
point of view not by looking outside of herself, but by looking within.

"I know," she responded in her rich voice. "I think I know."

He gazed at her with a smile which had grown as tired as the rest of
him. "Then if you know why don't you help--you others?" he asked. "Don't
you see that by standing aside, by keeping apart, you are doing all the
harm that you can? If democracy doesn't seem good enough for you, then
get down into the midst of it and make it better. That's the only
way--the only way on earth to make a better democracy--by putting the
best we've got into it. You can't make bread rise from the outside.
You've got to mix the yeast with the dough, if you want it to leaven the
whole lump."

She had been standing with her hands clasped before her and her eyes on
the sky beyond the window; and when he paused, with a husky tone in his
voice, she spoke almost as if she were in a dream. "I believe in you,"
she said, and then again, as he did not speak she repeated very slowly:
"I believe in you."

"That helps," he answered gravely. "I don't suppose you will ever
realize how much that will help me." As he finished he turned toward the
door; and a minute afterward, without another word or look, he went out
into the street, and she saw his figure cross the flowers and the
sunlight in the window.

When he had gone Corinna opened the door and stood watching the long
black shadows of the cedars creep over the walk of broken flagstones.
Always when she was alone her thoughts would return like homing birds to
John Benham; but this afternoon, though she spoke his name in her
reflections, she was conscious of an inner detachment from the vital
interests of her personal life. For a little while, so strong was the
mental impression Vetch had made on her, she saw his image even while
she thought the