"They've killed me," he began after a time--"I tried to do something for them. He--Rawn--would have used it for himself. I didn't want to.... "Jennie," he said, after a time; "I beg pardon, Mrs. Rawn--I forgot--would you take the doll, the little rubber one on the table there, up to the baby? Poor little thing! Oh, well! ..." He sighed. She quietly laid him back upon the couch. She heard the blood drip, drip, through and across the brocaded couch, falling at the edge of the silken rug, on the polished floor, eddying there; thickening there. CHAPTER XII THE GREAT JOHN RAWN I Far off, deep in the underground regions of the city at the focus of the republic's vast industrialism, the presses were reeling and clanging again, heavy with their story of disaster. The civilization of the day went on. Somewhere out upon the mountain tops, somewhere in the forests, the forces of nature gathered, marched on toward the sea. Somewhere dumbly, mutely, uncomplaining, the great river and its mate the great power, inter-stellar, not international--they two, as he but now vauntingly had dreamed, erstwhile silent partners of John Rawn--did their work.... For whom? For what? Answer that, my brothers. The answer is your own. As you and I shall speak in that answer, so shall our children eat well sleep well, in days yet to come, in this country which we still call our own, now all too little ours. II It was far past midnight when John Rawn again came down the stair, sobered and whitened by what he had seen in the death chamber. He tiptoed now back to the library door, through which and beneath whose silken curtains still there pierced a little shaft of light. He opened the door, peered in. He saw Virginia sitting there silent, white, unagitated, her features cameo-sharp, her skin waxen, indeed marble white, a woman as motionless, as silent, apparently as little animate as the one he had left behind him in the death chamber beyond the stair. She turned her eyes, not her face, toward him, but did not speak. The edge of her gown was moist, stained. John Rawn looked in turn at the long figure upon the couch, motionless, silent, its hands folded. Neither did it speak to him. Suddenly oppressed, suddenly afraid, he turned once more away. Irresolution was in his soul, uncertainty.