alism until there is no longer
any necessity for it, until men, of their owe free will, are ready to
renounce selfish, personal ambition and power and work for humanity, for
the state."

Mr. Parr's gesture implied that he cared not by what name the thing was
called, but he still appeared strangely, astonishingly calm;--Hodder,
with all his faculties acute, apprehended that he was dangerously calm.
The man who had formerly been his friend was now completely obliterated,
and he had the feeling almost of being about to grapple, in mortal
combat, with some unknown monster whose tactics and resources were
infinite, whose victims had never escaped. The monster was in Eldon
Parr--that is how it came to him. The waxy, relentless demon was
aroused. It behooved him, Hodder, to step carefully....

"That is all very fine, Mr. Hodder, very altruistic, very Christian,
I've no doubt-but the world doesn't work that way." (These were the
words borne in on Hodder's consciousness.) "What drives the world is the
motive furnished by the right of acquiring and holding property. If we
had a division to-day, the able men would come out on top next year."

The rector shook his head. He remembered, at that moment, Horace
Bentley.

"What drives the world is a far higher motive, Mr. Parr, the motive
with which have been fired the great lights of history, the motive of
renunciation and service which is transforming governments, which is
gradually making the world a better place in which to live. And we are
seeing men and women imbued with it, rising in ever increasing numbers
on every side to-day."

"Service!" Eldon Parr had seized upon the word as it passed and held it.
"What do you think my life has been? I suppose," he said, with a touch
of intense bitterness, "that you, too, who six months ago seemed
as reasonable a man as I ever met, have joined in the chorus of
denunciators. It has become the fashion to-day, thanks to your
socialists, reformers, and agitators, to decry a man because he is rich,
to take it for granted that he is a thief and a scoundrel, that he
has no sense of responsibility for his country and his fellow-men. The
glory, the true democracy of this nation, lies in its equal opportunity
for all. They take no account of that, of the fact that each has had the
same chance as his fellows. No, but they cry out that the man who, by
the sweat of his brow, has earned wealth ought to divide it up with the
lazy and the self-indulge