"I begin to believe it is the beginning of the greatest reform movement in history," he said at last. "They are searching for the truth; and whenever any great body of men search for the truth, they find it, and the finding of it is tremendous. Its effect reaches every quarter of the earth." They mounted to their perilous seat once more, and moved out into the night. The wind seemed to have gone down. There was a deep hush in the air, as if the high stars listened in their illimitable spaces. The plain seemed as lonely and as unlighted as the Arctic Ocean. Even the barking of a farm-yard dog had a wolfish and savage suggestiveness. They rode in silence. Ida sighed deeply. At last she said: "It's only an incident with us. We go back to our pleasant and varied lives; they go back to their lonely homes, and to their bleak corn-fields." "But you have given them something to hope for, something to think of," Bradley said, seeking to comfort her. "Yes, that is the only consolation I can get out of it. This movement has come into their lives like a new religion. It _is_ a new religion--the religion of humanity. It does help them to forget mud and rain and cold and monotony." Again Bradley's arm seemed necessary to her safety, but this time it closed around her, strong and resolute, yet he dared not say a word. He was not sure of her. It seemed impossible that this wonderful, beautiful, and intellectual woman should care for him; and yet, when he was speaking, her eyes had pleaded for him. The driver talked on about the meeting, but his passengers were silent. Under cover of listening they were both dreaming. Bradley was forecasting his life, and wondering how much she would make up of it; wondering if she would make more of it than she had of his past life. How far off she had always seemed to him, and yet she had always been a part of his inner life. Now she sat beside him, in the circle of his arm, and yet she seemed hopelessly out of his reach. She liked him as a friend and brother reformer--that was all. Besides, he had no right to hope now, when his fortunes had become failures. She was thinking of him. She was deeply gratified to think he had entered the great movement, and that she had been instrumental in converting him. Her heart warmed to him strangely for his honesty and his sincerity; and then he was so fine and earnest and strong-limbed! The pressure of his arm at her side moved her, and she smiled at herself. Unlike Bradley, she was self-analytical; she knew what all these things meant. "There's the station," the driver broke out, indicating some colored lights in the valley below them. "We're 'most home." At his word a vision of the plain, and the significance of its life, rushed over Ida--the serene majesty of the stars, the splendor and unused wealth of the prairies, the barriers to their use, the limitless robbery of the poor, in both city and country, the pathetic _homes_ of the renter.