g to be said for
such humane proposals of that of Jane Hastings? They would put off the
day of right conditions rightly and therefore permanently
founded--conditions in which master and slave or serf or wage-taker
would be no more; but, on the other hand, slaves with shorter hours of
toil and better surroundings could be enlightened more easily.
Perhaps. He was by no means sure; he could not but fear that anything
that tended to make the slave comfortable in his degradation must of
necessity weaken his aversion to degradation. Just as the worst kings
were the best kings because they hastened the fall of monarchy, so the
worst capitalists, the most rapacious, the most rigid enforcers of the
economic laws of a capitalistic society were the best capitalists, were
helping to hasten the day when men would work for what they earned and
would earn what they worked for--when every man's pay envelope would
contain his wages, his full wages, and nothing but his wages.

Still, where judgment was uncertain, he certainly had been unjust to
that well meaning girl. And was she really so worthless as he had on
first sight adjudged her? There might be exceptions to the rule that a
parasite born and bred can have no other instructor or idea but those
of parasitism. She was honest and earnest, was eager to learn the
truth. She might be put to some use. At any rate he had been unworthy
of his own ideals when he, assuming without question that she was the
usual capitalistic snob with the itch for gratifying vanity by
patronizing the "poor dear lower classes," had been almost insultingly
curt and mocking.

"What was the matter with me?" he asked himself. "I never acted in
that way before." And then he saw that his brusqueness had been the
cover for fear of of her--fear of the allure of her luxury and her
beauty. In love with her? He knew that he was not. No, his feeling
toward her was merely the crudest form of the tribute of man to
woman--though apparently woman as a rule preferred this form to any
other.

"I owe her an apology," he said to himself. And so it came to pass
that at three the following afternoon he was once more facing her in
that creeper-walled seclusion whose soft lights were almost equal to
light of gloaming or moon or stars in romantic charm.

Said he--always direct and simple, whether dealing with man or woman,
with devious person or straight:

"I've come to beg your pardon for what I said yesterday."