Judge Blount as a man of power and achievement, and they
were horrified at Martin's outbreak. The remainder of the dinner passed
like a funeral, the judge and Mr. Morse confining their talk to each
other, and the rest of the conversation being extremely desultory. Then
afterward, when Ruth and Martin were alone, there was a scene.

"You are unbearable," she wept.

But his anger still smouldered, and he kept muttering, "The beasts! The
beasts!"

When she averred he had insulted the judge, he retorted:-

"By telling the truth about him?"

"I don't care whether it was true or not," she insisted. "There are
certain bounds of decency, and you had no license to insult anybody."

"Then where did Judge Blount get the license to assault truth?" Martin
demanded. "Surely to assault truth is a more serious misdemeanor than to
insult a pygmy personality such as the judge's. He did worse than that.
He blackened the name of a great, noble man who is dead. Oh, the beasts!
The beasts!"

His complex anger flamed afresh, and Ruth was in terror of him. Never
had she seen him so angry, and it was all mystified and unreasonable to
her comprehension. And yet, through her very terror ran the fibres of
fascination that had drawn and that still drew her to him--that had
compelled her to lean towards him, and, in that mad, culminating moment,
lay her hands upon his neck. She was hurt and outraged by what had taken
place, and yet she lay in his arms and quivered while he went on
muttering, "The beasts! The beasts!" And she still lay there when he
said: "I'll not bother your table again, dear. They do not like me, and
it is wrong of me to thrust my objectionable presence upon them. Besides,
they are just as objectionable to me. Faugh! They are sickening. And
to think of it, I dreamed in my innocence that the persons who sat in the
high places, who lived in fine houses and had educations and bank
accounts, were worth while!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

"Come on, let's go down to the local."

So spoke Brissenden, faint from a hemorrhage of half an hour before--the
second hemorrhage in three days. The perennial whiskey glass was in his
hands, and he drained it with shaking fingers.

"What do I want with socialism?" Martin demanded.

"Outsiders are allowed five-minute speeches," the sick man urged. "Get
up and spout. Tell them why you don't want socialism. Tell them what
you think about them and their ghetto ethics. Sl