"If it didn't mean so much time, so much energy wasted! If you wouldn't devote your life to it,--you might, you know. It's quite like you, Electra. And that would be a pity; because he was never for a minute such a person as you think him,--never, Electra, never in the world." Electra rounded upon her in a flash of indignation. "Tell me what you think him." Rose's mind ran back to that first night when, with the daring inspired in her by their meeting, she had given Osmond a portrait of her father. Now was the time to paint it again, but, for some reason, she could not. The man had not changed, but his aims obscured him. Behind them, he was nothing, but they were large enough to make his monument. Instead of answering directly, she found herself saying,-- "I have had such letters about him!" "From the Brotherhood?" "Yes. And they will keep on coming for a long time now, because it is everywhere, you know, in far, far-off places. And there's a tremendous loyalty in them, not only to him but to the Brotherhood." "How can you read them and not be loyal, too!" Rose considered why she could. Was it because the Brotherhood seemed, in her latest acquaintance with it, to have all the seeds of the old conditions that made a world of hate? If it had been the pure bond it promised to be, could even her father's sins have quenched the flame in her? Then she remembered one night when, in her father's absence, some one had spoken like a poet and created, in shining imagery, a new world. She had seen it, the new world, hanging like a crystal in the rejoicing sky. "One night Ivan Gorof spoke," she began. Electra's brows came together. "He was the man that died." "How did you know?" "Peter told me." "Yes. Well, there was a time when Ivan Gorof was like a flame. He was more moved than any one. He was a student,--and so enthusiastic, so believing,--I can't tell you! Afterwards he changed. That came suddenly. But this night he spoke about the Brotherhood as he wanted it to be. He said it could be a chain of hands round the earth, of people who wanted to do justice and show mercy. The old oppressors killed, he said. The Brotherhood must not kill. It can put to death,--but justly." "What did he mean by justly?" "Ah, that I don't know. I don't believe he knew, that night. He was like a man seeing a vision. But if such a thing could grow and grow, he said, that would be the kingdom of God. It would begin with the poor. Then some day a king would join it, and there would be rejoicing and wonder because some would think the king was mad and others would know it meant a great step upward. And they would all choose law, not liberty as the Brotherhood sees it. And then, he said, there would be a new heaven and a new earth, and it wouldn't be possible for oppressors to live, because everybody would love love and be afraid of hate. But it would all come through men who hated injustice more when they did it than when it was done to them."