hat now and then," she said, and a moment
afterward, "Is it possible, do you suppose, that we shall find when it
is too late that this Gideon Vetch is the stone that the builders
rejected? A ridiculous fancy, and yet who knows, it might turn out to be
true. Stranger things have happened than that!"

"It may be. One never can tell." Then he laughed with tolerant
affection. "I've found out the trouble with John."

"The trouble with John?" Her voice trembled.

"Yes, the trouble with John is that he lacks blood at the brain. He is
trying to make a living organism out of a skeleton--to build the world
over on a skull and cross-bones--and it can't be done. I admire John as
much as I ever did. He is as logical as a problem in geometry. But Vetch
is nearer to the truth of things. Vetch has the one attribute that John
needs to make him complete."

She nodded. "I know. You mean feeling?"

"Human sympathy--the sympathy that means imagination and insight. That
is the only power that Vetch has, but, by Jove, it is the greatest of
all! It is the spirit that comprehends, that reconciles, and recreates.
Both Vetch and John have failed, I think; Vetch for want of education,
system, method, and John because, having all this essential framework,
he still lacked the blood and fibre of humanity. In its essence, I
suppose it is a difference of principle, the old familiar struggle
between the romantic and the realistic temperament, which divides in
politics into the progressive and the conservative forces. There is
nothing in history, I learned that at college, except the war between
these two irreconcilable spirits. Irreconcilable, they call them, and
yet I wonder, I wonder more and more, if this is not a misinterpretation
of history? It seems to me that the leader of the future, even in so
small a community as this one, must be big enough to combine opposite
elements; that he must take the good where he finds it; that he must
vitalize tradition and discipline progress--"

"You mean that he must accept both the past and the future?" While her
heart craved the substance of truth, she dispensed platitudes with a
benevolent air.

"How can it be otherwise? That, it seems to me, is the only logical way
out of the muddle. The difficulty, of course, is to remain
practical--not to let the vision run away with one. It will require
moderation, which Vetch has not, and adaptability, which John has never
learned."

"And never will learn," rejo