This faculty enabled her to perceive how often reformers run off the track of common sense, and while pinning their faith to one particular little tenet which they constitute the corner-stone of their philosophy, lose sight of the whole world beyond. Olive possessed in a high degree the sense of proportion, which in a true reformer is generally absent. When Ezra with his cultivated mind and really fine intellect, talked to her of the reforming of the present type of civilization, and briefly sketched out what he hoped would be the result of the introduction of the communistic idea into life, she could not help remarking that he used very much the same expressions, and seemed animated by very much the same hopes, as those indulged in by one of the dietetic reformers she knew in Smyrna, who promised all the glories of the golden age to mankind if the human race would only give up the baneful practices of eating meat and of cooking vegetables! And every few minutes, across the mirror of her reflections, there came a shadow of a desperate man spurring on a jaded horse. Olive could not shake off a sense of impending disaster, but unlike Ezra, who attributed his melancholy to his great love for Olive and a vague, unreasoning dread of something happening to her in his absence, she knew quite well what she feared and why. As the morning wore on, Olive began to feel it impossible to remain quietly at home in the midst of her anxiety. She must go out and hear what news there was, or at all events she must learn if there was any news. Resolved not to hold any communication with Madame other than what was publicly necessary—for between the two there was now maintained a sort of armed neutrality—she decided to call at the blacksmith’s, as Brother Green was in the way of most of the gossip, if gossip is a term that could be rightly applied to the feeble and intermittent stream of prairie news that trickled through the smithy. Brother Green was a silent, self-absorbed man who worked steadily and brought much personal devotion into the project of Perfection City. He was a lonely man, a widower, and to judge by appearances a disappointed man as well. He was surprised to see Sister Olive, and very pleased, but could not shake hands as he was very dirty, and she looked so brightly clean. Having wiped a wooden bench with his leather apron and again with the sleeve of his shirt, he invited her to be seated. Brother Green was welding some iron, and Olive waited until the operation was concluded and the plough-hook made before she talked to him. Meanwhile she watched with interest the white glowing fire and the pulpy white-hot iron-bar, helplessly bending over at the end like a piece of half boiled molasses candy. “I felt so lonesome, I thought I would come out and talk to someone,” she said, by way of excuse for a first visit. “Diana isn’t a bit of company when you feel really lonesome. Ezra is gone for four days, did you know?”