into a realization of its careless, guilty
heart, crying for vengeance, stirring horror and anger and pity. Who was
the guilty one, if not he, the boss?

And then the inquisition began, the repeated sting of lashing thoughts
and cruel questions. He asked himself what right he had to be an
employer, to take the responsibility of thirty lives in his hands. He
was careless, easy-going, he was in business for profits. Had such a man
any right to be placed over others, to be given the power over other
lives? The guilt was his; the blame fell on him. He should have kept
clean house; he should have stamped out the smoking; he should not have
smoked himself. There fell upon his shoulders a burden not to be borne,
the burden of his blame, and he felt as if nothing now in the world
could assuage that sense of guilt.

Life, he found, was a fury, a cyclone, not the simple, easy affair he
had thought it. It was his living for himself, his living alone, his
ignorance of the fact that his life was tangled in with the lives of all
human beings, so that he was socially responsible, responsible for the
misery and poverty and pain all about him.

That _he_ should be the one! Had he not lived just the average
life--blameless, cheerful, hard-working, fun-loving--the life of the
average American? Just by every-day standards his was the useful and
good life. But no, that was not enough. In his rush for success he had
made property his treasure instead of human beings. That was the crime.
And so these dead lay all about him as if he had murdered them with his
hands. It was his being an average man that had killed sixty-three girls
and men. And what had he been after? Money? He did not use his money,
did not need so much. Just a little shared with his employees would have
saved them. No, the average man must cease to exist, and the social man
take his place, the brother careful of his fellow-men, not careless of
all but his own gain.

A boy passed, hoarsely shouting that terrible extra. Would nothing in
the world silence that sound? The cold sweat came out on his face. He
was the guilty one. That was the one fact that he knew.

And then he paused; the door opened creakingly and his mother entered.
She was a magnificent young-old woman, her body sixty-three years old,
her mind singularly fresh and young. She was tall, straight, spirited,
and under the neat glossy-white hair was a noble face, somewhat long,
somewhat slim, a little pallid, bu