Phineas Duge thrust his hand into the flames and held the papers there.
Norris Vine seemed for a moment as though he would have sprung forward,
but Littleson intervened, and Deane himself.
"They shall burn!" Duge cried. "If you are really the altruist you claim
to be, Mr. Vine, you need not fear their destruction. We are changing
our tactics. If the bill becomes law we will face its effect, whatever
it may be. There shall be no bribery. There shall be no underground
history. If the people of America attack us, we will fight our
own battles."
Norris Vine sighed.
"In another half an hour," he said, "my cable would have been sent.
To-morrow New York would have been indeed the city of unrest."
Phineas Duge turned upon him coldly.
"You," he said, "are one of those unpractical persons, who bring to the
affairs of a purely utilitarian epoch the 'faineant' scruples of the
dilettante and romanticist. You cannot regulate the flow of wealth any
more than you can dam a river with shifting sand. Don't you know that
destiny, whether it be guided by other powers or not, was never meant to
be shaped by the lookers-on?"
Norris Vine shrugged his shoulders and turned toward the door.
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