Page:The One Woman (1903).pdf/266

 conquering. The one thing worth while is character, and your Socialistic pig-pen cannot produce it. In this herd of swine to which you hope to reduce society an Edison or a Darwin is rewarded with the pay of a hod-carrier. The hod-carrier gets all he's worth now. This instinct for the herd, which you call Solidarity and Brotherhood, is not a prophecy of progress; it is a memory—a memory of the dirt out of which humanity has slowly grown."

Gordon grunted contemptuously.

"Yet only a brute can be content with the cruelty and infamy of our present society."

"All our ills can be met by careful legislation. You propose to pull the tree up by the roots because you see bugs crawling on a limb."

Kate rose and left the room, saying she would return in a moment, and Overman leaned back in his chair again, gazing at the ceiling.

Suddenly straightening himself, he drew his brow down close over his eye, half closing its lid, bent toward Gordon, and in a low tone slowly asked:

"But I would like to know, Frank, what in the devil you really meant by that 'Freedom and Fellowship' in marriage?"

"Just what I said."

"Bah! You don't mean to apply such tommyrot to your own wife now that she's yours?"

"Certainly."

"It's beyond belief that you're such a fool. You say to your wife and to the world, 'This peerless