"I had," Maraton admitted, "but the time came when I was forced to ask myself whether they were not rather the plans of the dreamer and the theorist, when I was forced to ask myself whether I was justified in destroying this generation for the sake of those to come. Life, after all, is a marvellous gift. You and I may believe in immortality, but who can be sure? It is easy enough to play chess, but when the pawns are human lives, who would not hesitate?" Maxendorf sighed. "I cannot talk with you, Maraton," he said. "You will not speak with me honestly. You came, you landed on these shores with an inspired idea--something magnificent, something worthy. You have substituted for it the time-worn methods of all the reformers since the days of Adam, who have parted with their principles and dabbled in sentimental altruism. Piecemeal legislation--what can it do?" "It can build," Maraton declared. "It can build, generation by generation. It can produce a saner race, and as the light comes, so the truth will flow in upon the minds of all." "An illusion!" Selingman interrupted, with a sudden fierceness in his tone. "Once, Maraton, you looked at life sanely enough. Are you sure that to-day you have not put on the poisoned spectacles? Don't you know the end of these spasmodic reforms? You pass, your influence passes, your mantle is buried in your grave, and the country slips back, and the people suffer, and the great wheel grinds them into bone and powder just as surely a century hence as a century ago. Man, you don't start right. If you would restore a ruined and neglected garden, you must first destroy, make a bonfire of the weeds prepare your soil. Then, in the springtime, fresh flowers will blossom, the trees will give leaf, the birds who have deserted a ruined and fruitless waste will return and sing once more the song of life. But there must be destruction, Maraton. You yourself preached it once, preached fire and the sword. Something has gone from you since those days. Compromise--the spirit of compromise you call it. How one hates the sound of it! Bah! Man, you are on a lower level, when you talk the smug talk of to-day. I am disappointed in you. Maxendorf is disappointed in you. You are riding down the easy way on to the sandbanks of failure."