"Because they'd tighten up the grip of a few men on the neck of the people! I don't know whether you call that being a Socialist or not, and I don't care. Change is coming. It's not the fault of the poor that it's coming. It's the fault of the rich. I broke them up--because things can't go on this way, money rolling Up all the time for a few, and life getting harder all the time for so many. God didn't make the rivers and the mountains and the forests for that purpose--to give them to a few. We've got to make changes, and big ones, in this government, or we're gone. I'm no Socialist at all. I don't want what some one else has won--if he's won it _fair_. But the wrong is in our government--the very one of all on earth that meant fair play. We don't get it--now. Some day we must. I don't see what difference it makes what name you give the new form of government. There must be _change_, that's all; or else we're gone! "Well now, what they wanted me to do was to give that all to a few. I couldn't do it! By God! Mrs. Rawn, I faced it and I tried, and I _couldn't_ do it! Maybe I was wrong. Anyhow, here I stand." [Illustration: (Rawn and Virginia)] V "Do you know," she said at length, slowly, "these are things that never came to my mind in all my life? I never in all my life thought of any of these things. I only wanted--" "You wanted to win. You wanted what most American women do--money--station--power--to be envied; that's what you played for. Well, you've won! Look at all this about you. I don't suppose there's a woman in this town more admired by men or more envied by women than you. You've got what you craved, I reckon." "I thought I had. But now, to-night, I'm not so sure!" "You couldn't give it up," he sneered, "any more than Grace could, and she couldn't any more than a leopard could change its spots. It goes too deep. You couldn't expect anything different.