people injured, but even
property was damaged." Eleanor was the only person who caught the
"even." "You know very well that if the socialists broke in on a meeting
of well-to-do citizens they would be sent up the river."

Piers stared at his guest with his round, bloodshot eyes. He was a
sincere man, and stupid. He reached his conclusions by processes which
had nothing to do with thought, and when someone talked like
this--attacking his belief that it was wrong to break up his meetings
and right to break up the other man's--he felt as he did at a conjurer's
performance: that it was all very clever, but a sensible person knew it
was a trick, even though he could not explain how it was done.

"I'm not much good at an argument," he said, "but I know what's right. I
know what the country needs, and if you show favoritism to these
disloyal fellows I shall vote against you next time, I tell you
frankly."

Lydia, hearing by the tones that the conversation across the table
promised more vitality than her waning game with Gore about the
barbarian epithet, dropped her own sentence and answered, "No one really
believes in equality who's on top. I believe in special privilege."

O'Bannon, who had been contemptuously annoyed with Piers, was amused at
Lydia's frankness as she bent her head to look at him under the candle
shades and the light gleamed in her eyes and flashed on the emeralds on
her forehead. Beauty, after all, is the greatest special privilege of
all.

"That's what I said," he returned. "No one honestly believes in my
platform--the equal administration of the present laws."

"I do," said Piers. "I do--everyone does."

O'Bannon glanced at him, and deciding that it wasn't worth while to take
him round the circle again let the sentence drop.

"Do you believe in it yourself, Mr. O'Bannon?" asked Lydia, and she
stretched out a slim young arm and moved the candle so that she could
look straight at him or he at her. "I mean, if you caught some friend
smuggling--me, for example--would you be as implacable as if you caught
my dressmaker?"

"More so; you would have less excuse."

She laughed and shook her head.

"You know in your heart it never works like that."

"Unfortunately," he answered, "my office does not take me into Federal
customs, or you might find I was right."

"The administration of the customs of the United States," Piers began,
but his wife interrupted.

"Don't explain it, there's a dear," she s