The
Express still approved it, but not in headlines, and
wished the fact to be widely understood that while the
imperial idea was a very big idea, the Liberals of South
Fox were going to win this election without any assistance
from it.
Lorne submitted. After all, victory was the thing. There
could be no conquest for the idea without the party
triumph first. He submitted, but his heart rebelled. He
looked over the subdivisional reports with Williams and
Farquharson, and gave ear to their warning interpretations;
but his heart was an optimist, and turned always to the
splendid projection upon the future that was so incomparably
the title to success of those who would unite to further
it. His mind accepted the old working formulas for dealing
with an average electorate, but to his eager apprehending
heart it seemed unbelievable that the great imperial
possibility, the dramatic chance for the race that hung
even now, in the history of the world, between the rising
and the setting of the sun, should fail to be perceived
and acknowledged as the paramount issue, the contingency
which made the by-election of South Fox an extraordinary
and momentous affair. He believed in the Idea; he saw
it, with Wallingham, not only a glorious prospect, but
an educative force; and never had he a moment of such
despondency that it confounded him upon his horizon in
the faded colours of some old Elizabethan mirage.
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