."

Hare-Lip rubbed his bullet head reminiscently, and the boys returned to
the old man, who was maundering ecstatically about Vesta, the squaw of
the founder of the Chauffeur Tribe.

"And so I say to you that you cannot understand the awfulness of the
situation. The Chauffeur was a servant, understand, a servant. And he
cringed, with bowed head, to such as she. She was a lord of life, both
by birth and by marriage. The destinies of millions, such as he, she
carried in the hollow of her pink-white hand. And, in the days before
the plague, the slightest contact with such as he would have been
pollution. Oh, I have seen it. Once, I remember, there was Mrs. Goldwin,
wife of one of the great magnates. It was on a landing stage, just
as she was embarking in her private dirigible, that she dropped her
parasol. A servant picked it up and made the mistake of handing it to
her--to her, one of the greatest royal ladies of the land! She shrank
back, as though he were a leper, and indicated her secretary to receive
it. Also, she ordered her secretary to ascertain the creature's name and
to see that he was immediately discharged from service. And such a woman
was Vesta Van Warden. And her the Chauffeur beat and made his slave.

[Illustration: And her the Chauffeur beat and made his slave 158]

"--Bill--that was it; Bill, the Chauffeur. That was his name. He was
a wretched, primitive man, wholly devoid of the finer instincts and
chivalrous promptings of a cultured soul. No, there is no absolute
justice, for to him fell that wonder of womanhood, Vesta Van Warden. The
grievous-ness of this you will never understand, my grandsons; for
you are yourselves primitive little savages, unaware of aught else but
savagery. Why should Vesta not have been mine? I was a man of culture
and refinement, a professor in a great university. Even so, in the time
before the plague, such was her exalted position, she would not have
deigned to know that I existed. Mark, then, the abysmal degradation
to which she fell at the hands of the Chauffeur. Nothing less than the
destruction of all mankind had made it possible that I should know her,
look in her eyes, converse with her, touch her hand--ay, and love her
and know that her feelings toward me were very kindly. I have reason to
believe that she, even she, would have loved me, there being no other
man in the world except the Chauffeur. Why, when it destroyed eight
billions of souls, did not the plague des