“We shall go into this thing the more thoroughly when our people as a whole are convinced of its necessity. And for a hundred millions of people to be convinced is a matter that takes time. But even there you can see how a great purpose is changing them almost against their own will. It isn’t many months ago that they elected a President on the slogan, ‘He kept us out of war.’ Had it not been for that slogan it’s doubtful whether or not he would have been elected. All politics apart, we can say that, had he not been elected, it’s doubtful whether any other candidate could carry with him a united Congress when we come to the moment of decision. Were the President not to have a united Congress, behind him, there would be no united people. As it is we’re all forging forward together, President, Congress, and people, as surely as winter forges forward into spring; and when the minute arrives—” He broke off with a smile I can only call exalted. With a hasty pressure of my hand he was off to some other fellow with some other needful word. _CHAPTER XXX_ My purpose in telling you all this is to show you why I reacted so slightly to Regina’s charge of the indirect method. Though my curiosity as to what she meant was keen enough, the pressure of other interests allowed it no time to work. This is to say, as soon as I got back into the current of great events personal concerns became relatively unimportant. They had to wait. One developed the capacity to keep them waiting. But toward the middle of March I met her one day in Fifth Avenue. Even from a distance I could see that her step was vigor and her look animation. The haunting sadness had fled from her eyes, while the generous smile, spontaneous and flashing, had returned to her scarlet lips. It was a new Regina because it was the old one. To me her first exclamation was: “How well you look! You’re almost as you were before the war.” Though I was conscious of a pang at seeing her so far from pining away, I endeavored to play up. “Mayn’t I say the same of you? What’s done it?” She laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. Work, I suppose—and the knowledge that things are marching.” “I hear you’re very busy.” “I hear you’re busy, too.” “People do seem to want to be told things at first hand.” “I find the same.” “And so one has to be on the job.” “There’s nothing like it, is there? It”—she flung me one of her old, quick, daring glances—“it fills all the needs. Nothing else becomes urgent.” “You mean that one’s personal affairs—” “Oh, one has no personal affairs. I remember a man who was in the San Francisco earthquake telling me that for forty-eight hours he hardly needed to eat or sleep.” “I’ve seen that doubled and trebled.” “Of course you have. It simply means that when we get out of ourselves we can make supermen of the commonest material.” I ventured to say: “You look happy, Regina. Are you?” “Are you?” I weighed this in order to answer her truthfully.