don't know save from
charity contact, perhaps,--that I've sometimes wondered if they ever
despair of us, think we, too, are pretty hopeless and hard to--to
wake up."

"And you imagine the opinions and conclusions of uneducated,
untrained, unthinking people will give you light concerning the
valuation of your class? It matters little what they think. They
don't think!"

"Do you know many of these people of whose mental machinery you are
so sure?" I smiled in the eyes which would not smile into mine.
"Know them personally, I mean?"

"I do not." Selwyn's tone was irritable. "My business dealings with
them have not inspired desire for a closer acquaintance. To get as
much money as possible from the men who employ them and give in
return as little work as they can, is the creed of most of them. You
can do nothing with people like that. I know them better than you
will ever know them."

"As a corporation attorney, yes. As a division of the human race, as
working people, you know them. As beings much more like yourself
than you imagine, you don't."

Selwyn again stopped. "You'd hardly expect me to find them
congenial--the beings you refer to."

"I would not." I laughed. "They are generations removed from you in
education and culture, in many of the things essential to you, but
some of them see more clearly than you. Both need to understand you
owe each other something. And how are you going to find out what it
is, see from each other's point of view, unless you know each other
better? Unless--"

"For the love of Heaven, get rid of such nonsense! That particular
kind of sentiment has gone to seed. Every sane man recognizes
certain obligations to his fellow-man, every normal one tries to pay
them, but all this rot about bringing better relations to pass
between masters and men through familiarity, through putting people
in places they are not fitted to fill, is idle dreaming based on
ignorance of human nature. To give a man what he doesn't earn is to
do him an injury. Most men win the rewards they are entitled to.
You're a visionist. You always have been--"

"And am always going to be! Life would hardly be endurable were it
not for dreaming, hoping, believing. I could stand any loss better
than that of my faith in humankind." I sat upright, my hands locked
in my lap. "I'm not here to do things for the people you have so
little patience with. I told you I wanted to see what sort of people
w