“I want you to vote with me,” she continued, “for the ‘higher law.’  I want you to vote with the west-bound wheels, with God’s blades of grass!”

“God! woman!  You have gift of tongues!  Now listen to me.  Which shall we train with, among your northern men, John Quincy Adams or William Lloyd Garrison, with that sane man or the hysterical one?  Is Mr. Beecher a bigger man than Mr. Jefferson was?”

“I know you’re honest,” she said, frowning, “but let us try to see.  There’s Mr. Birney, of Alabama, a Southerner who has gone over, through all, to the abolitionists as you call them.  And would you call Mr. Clay a fool?  Or Mr. Benton, here in your own state, who—­”

“Oh, don’t mention Benton to me here!  He’s anathema in this state.”

“Yet you might well study Mr. Benton’s views.  He sees the case of Lily first, the case of the Constitution afterward.  Ah, why can’t you?  Why, Sir, if I could only get you to think as he does—­a man with your power and influence and faculty for leadership—­I’d call this winter well spent—­better spent than if I’d been left in Washington.”

“Suppose I wanted to change my beliefs, how would I go about it?” He frowned in his intent effort to follow her, even in her enthusiasm.  “Once I asked a preacher how I could find religion, and he told me by coming to the Saviour.  I told him that was begging the question, and asked him how I could find the Saviour.  All he could say was to answer once more, ‘Come to the Saviour!’ That’s reasoning in a circle.  Now, if a man hasn’t got faith, how’s he going to get it—­by what process can he reach out into the dark and find it?  What’s the use of his saying he has found faith when he knows he hasn’t?  There’s a resemblance between clean religion and honest politics.  The abolitionists have never given us Southerners any answer to this.”

“No,” said she.  “I can not give you any answer.  For myself, I have found that faith.”

“You would endure much for your convictions?” he demanded suddenly.

“Very much, Sir.”

“Suffer martyrdom?”

“Perhaps I have done so.”

“Would you suffer more?  You undertake the conversion of a sinner like myself?”

The flame of his eye caught hers in spite of herself.  A little flush came into her cheek.

“Tell me,” he demanded imperiously, “on what terms?”

“You do not play the game.  You would ask me to preach to you—­but you would come to see the revival, not to listen to grace.  It isn’t playing the game.”

“But you’re seeking converts?”

“I would despise no man in the world so much as a hypocrite, a turn-coat!  You can’t purchase faith in the market place, not any more than—­”

“Any more than you can purchase love?  But I’ve been wanting not the sermon, but the preacher.  You!  You!  Yes, it is the truth.  I want nothing else in the world so much as you.”