Henry Wolverton turned his back on her and walked over to the window. After a short pause he faced her again and said, “You have a remarkable power of statement, Miss Jeffery. I must admit that I have never before considered the precise use, in the pragmatical sense, to which I might apply my--er--scholarship; and I am ready to grant that your point is a good one. Where your otherwise admirable logic seems to fail, however, is in the admission that though I might turn my knowledge to good effect by advising youth, I may be wasting all my effort since youth will probably not be guided by my teaching.” “I don’t know much about logic,” replied Susan, “but I should have thought it must be pretty evident to you, to-day of all days, that if we were going to be guided only by the lessons of history, our league would be a back-number in a week. Isn’t it possible for you to get it into your head that history isn’t everything?” She put her last question with the appealing gesture of a mother addressing a refractory and rather stupid child. “How is history going to get us out of the mess you’ve landed us in, for example?” she continued, as Henry Wolverton made no attempt to answer her. “How is history, alone, going to help us presently to start everything afresh on a new basis? You must know, yourself, that it’s no good trying to get back to the old way of doing things. That could only mean, by your own showing, that we should just be preparing the way for all this to happen again.” Henry Wolverton threw up his hands with a gesture of despair. “But if I admit that you’re right,” he said, “I have to face the conclusion that I’ve wasted my whole life.” “Well, in a way, I’m afraid you have, rather,” Susan admitted. “It’s a great pity, for instance, about this revolution of yours. It means such a lot of blood and disorder; and people do get so out of hand when there’s fighting going on. Now if the owners and the middle-classes hadn’t been so cocksure, and had given way, we could have started in on our new methods of government without any bother.” She paused a moment, before she added, “We’ve got it all worked out, you know, but, of course, I can’t tell you anything about it, yet.” “I am, in fact, what you would call a back-number,” Henry Wolverton said. Susan puckered her forehead. “I think there’s still a hope for you,” she remarked. “After all these years?” he asked. “If you’d let me take you in hand for a bit,” she said. “You seem willing to learn.” “But you have surely more important work to do? You couldn’t spare time to teach me?” he suggested. “I think I might work it in,” she said reflectively. “I’d take you about with me and show you things--real things, you know. What’s chiefly wrong with you is that you’ve spent all your time over your old books.” “You suggest that I ought to study life in--in action?” Henry Wolverton inquired. “Rather,” Susan agreed. “You ought to come to one of our meetings.”