"Perhaps"—Marion spoke with hesitation—"perhaps you might sway him from those."
"Do you believe that a wife—even for her own happiness—ought to turn her husband from his convictions?"
"If she is sure they are mistaken, she might demonstrate that to him. I did n't mean, Lydia, that you should ask him to yield his convictions in deference to your wish."
"So far as his sympathy with the labor union is concerned, and his conviction that it should not be exterminated as Floyd is trying to exterminate it, I don't know that Stewart is mistaken. I can't argue with him about that; I don't know enough; and when he talks to me on the subject I can't see any flaw in his reasoning. He is entirely conscientious in supporting the union—and, in that way, in antagonizing Floyd."
"It is n't his supporting those principles that makes the trouble," Marion insisted. "I'm sure Floyd is liberal enough to grant him that freedom and still look upon him as a friend. But Floyd can't look on him as a friend after such personal attacks as Stewart has made; it's the personal thing that maybe you could smooth out, Lydia; if you could persuade Stewart that Floyd has n't any such motives as Stewart has been—"
Lydia held out her hand with a look of distress.
"I've tried—I've tried my best. But Stewart when he has an idea can see only that, he sees straight ahead to that, and everything must conform to it. Floyd's cause is a bad one and every action that Floyd takes in the cause is—is a bad action. I can't convince Stewart that it is n't. He's fortified with evidence—evidence—I don't know! Here now—here is the way his mind works; he tells me that the riot the other morning was deliberately provoked by Floyd—that Floyd hired a band of desperate men to make a pretense of going to work, knowing that there would be trouble, hoping there would be—because, after the first violence, public sympathy
