Part 10 (1/2)

We do have much in common, you and I.

{Margaret}

The future.

{Knox}

(_Gravely, looking at her with s.h.i.+ning eyes._) I sometimes fear for more immediate reasons than that.

(_Margaret looks at him in alarm, and at the same time betrays pleasure in what he has said._) For you.

{Margaret}

(_Hastily._) Don't look at me that way. Your eyes are flas.h.i.+ng.

Some one might see and misunderstand.

{Knox}

(_In confusion, awkwardly._) I was unaware that I--that I was looking at you----in any way that----

{Margaret}

I'll tell you why you are here. Because I sent for you.

{Knox}

(_With signs of ardor._) I would come whenever you sent for me, and go wherever you might send me.

{Margaret}

(_Reprovingly._)

Please, please---- It was about that speech. I have been hearing about it from everybody--rumblings and mutterings and dire prophecies. I know how busy you are, and I ought not to have asked you to come. But there was no other way, and I was so anxious.

{Knox}

(_Pleased._) It seems so strange that you, being what you are, affiliated as you are, should be interested in the welfare of the common people.

{Margaret}

(_Judicially._) I do seem like a traitor in my own camp. But as father said a while ago, I, too, have dreamed my dream. I did it as a girl--Plato's _Republic_, Moore's _Utopia_--I was steeped in all the dreams of the social dreamers.

(_During all that follows of her speech, Knox is keenly interested, his eyes glisten and he hangs on her words._)

And I dreamed that I, too, might do something to bring on the era of universal justice and fair play. In my heart I dedicated myself to the cause of humanity. I made Lincoln my hero-he still is. But I was only a girl, and where was I to find this cause?--how to work for it? I was shut in by a thousand restrictions, hedged in by a thousand conventions. Everybody laughed at me when I expressed the thoughts that burned in me.

What could I do? I was only a woman. I had neither vote nor right of utterance. I must remain silent. I must do nothing. Men, in their lordly wisdom, did all. They voted, orated, governed. The place for women was in the home, taking care of some lordly man who did all these lordly things.

{Knox}

You understand, then, why I am for equal suffrage.