ke your man for a husband rather
than any other man? Because you like him that way, that is all. Why do
you like? Because you like. Why does fire burn and frost bite? Why
are there clever men and stupid men? masters and slaves? employers and
workingmen? Why is black black? Answer that and you answer everything."

"But it is not right That men should go hungry and without work when
they want to work if only they can get a square deal," Saxon protested.

"Oh, but it is right, just as it is right that stone won't burn like
wood, that sea sand isn't sugar, that thorns prick, that water is wet,
that smoke rises, that things fall down and not up."

But such doctrine of reality made no impression on Saxon. Frankly, she
could not comprehend. It seemed like so much nonsense.

"Then we have no liberty and independence," she cried passionately. "One
man is not as good as another. My child has not the right to live that a
rich mother's child has."

"Certainly not," Mercedes answered.

"Yet all my people fought for these things," Saxon urged, remembering
her school history and the sword of her father.

"Democracy--the dream of the stupid peoples. Oh, la la, my dear,
democracy is a lie, an enchantment to keep the work brutes content, just
as religion used to keep them content. When they groaned in their misery
and toil, they were persuaded to keep on in their misery and toil by
pretty tales of a land beyond the skies where they would live famously
and fat while the clever ones roasted in everlasting fire. Ah, how
the clever ones must have chuckled! And when that lie wore out, and
democracy was dreamed, the clever ones saw to it that it should be in
truth a dream, nothing but a dream. The world belongs to the great and
clever."

"But you are of the working people," Saxon charged.

The old woman drew herself up, and almost was angry.

"I? Of the working people? My dear, because I had misfortune with moneys
invested, because I am old and can no longer win the brave young men,
because I have outlived the men of my youth and there is no one to go
to, because I live here in the ghetto with Barry Higgins and prepare
to die--why, my dear, I was born with the masters, and have trod all
my days on the necks of the stupid. I have drunk rare wines and sat at
feasts that would have supported this neighborhood for a lifetime. Dick
Golden and I--it was Dickie's money, but I could have had it Dick Golden
and I dropped four hundred thousan