Selma rose with burning cheeks, but a stately air. "If that is your decision, I must do without your name. Already we have many signatures, and shall obtain hundreds more without difficulty. We look at things differently, Pauline. Our point of view has never been the same. Ridiculous? I should be proud of the ridicule of people too selfish or too unenlightened to heed the outcry of aspiring humanity. If we had to depend on your little set to strike the note of progress, I fear we should sit with folded hands most of the time." "I do not know what you mean by my little set," said Pauline with a smile. "I am too busy with my college duties to belong to any set. I see my friends occasionally just as you see yours; and as to progress--well, I fear that you are right in your statement that we shall never look at things alike. To me progress presupposes in the individual or the community attaining it a prelude of slow struggle, disheartening doubts, and modest reverence for previous results--for the accumulated wisdom of the past." "I mean by your set the people who think as you do. I understand your point of view. I should have liked," she added, "to ask you to share with me the responsibility of directing the policy of the Benham Free Hospital, had I not known that you would listen to the voice of conservative authority in preference to that of fearless innovation." "I certainly should have hesitated long before I overruled the experience of those who have devoted their lives to conscientious effort to discover truth." "That illustrates admirably the difference between us, Pauline. No one is more eager to aid the discovery of truth than I, but I believe that truth often is concealed from those who go on, day after day, following hum-drum routine, however conscientious. I recognized that Dr. Ashmun was a live man and had fresh ideas, so I chose him as our chief of staff, notwithstanding the doctors were unfriendly to him. As a result, my hospital has individuality, and is already a success. That's the sort of thing I mean. Good-by," she said, putting out her hand. "I don't expect to convert you, Pauline, to look at things my way, but you must realize by this time that it is the Benham way." "Yet the leading physicians of Benham disapprove of your plans for the management of the hospital," said Pauline firmly. "But the people of Benham approve of them. I prefer their sanction to that of a coterie of cautious, unenthusiastic autocrats."