“You see how it is,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “They have enormous interests at stake. They said I would drag them into war, that I would disturb values, that the business interests of the country would suffer. I’m under obligations to most of them, they have advised me in financial matters, and they threatened--they threatened to make it unpleasant for me.” His voice hardened and he drew in his breath quickly, and laughed. “You wouldn’t understand if I were to tell you. It’s rather involved. And after all, they may be right, agitation may be bad for the country. And your party leader after all is your party leader, isn’t he, and if he says ‘no’ what are you to do? My sympathies are just as keen for these poor women and children as ever, but as these men say, ‘charity begins at home,’ and we mustn’t do anything to bring on war prices again, or to send stocks tumbling about our heads, must we?” He leaned back in his chair again and sighed. “Sympathy is an expensive luxury, I find,” he added. Arkwright rose stiffly and pushed Stanton away from him with his hand. He moved like a man coming out of a dream. “Don’t talk to me like that,” he said in a low voice. The noise about the table ended on the instant, but Arkwright did not notice that it had ceased. “You know I don’t understand that,” he went on; “what does it matter to me!” He put his hand up to the side of his face and held it there, looking down at Stanton. He had the dull, heavy look in his eyes of a man who has just come through an operation under some heavy drug. “‘Wall Street,’ ‘trusts,’ ‘party leaders,’” he repeated, “what are they to me? The words don’t reach me, they have lost their meaning, it is a language I have forgotten, thank God!” he added. He turned and moved his eyes around the table, scanning the faces of the men before him. “Yes, you are twelve to one,” he said at last, still speaking dully and in a low voice, as though he were talking to himself. “You have won a noble victory, gentlemen. I congratulate you. But I do not blame you, we are all selfish and self-seeking. I thought I was working only for Cuba, but I was working for myself, just as you are. I wanted to feel that it was I who had helped to bring relief to that plague-spot, that it was through my efforts the help had come. Yes, if he had done as I asked, I suppose I would have taken the credit.” He swayed slightly, and to steady himself caught at the back of his chair. But at the same moment his eyes glowed fiercely and he held himself erect again. He pointed with his finger at the circle of great men who sat looking up at him in curious silence.