sorts--of a certain sort. But of that Mrs
Fyne of course had no personal knowledge then; she told me however that
even in the Priory days she had suspected her of being an artificial,
heartless, vulgar-minded woman with the lowest possible-ideals. But de
Barral did not know it. He literally did not know anything..."

"But tell me, Marlow," I interrupted, "how do you account for this
opinion? He must have been a personality in a sense--in some one sense
surely. You don't work the greatest material havoc of a decade at
least, in a commercial community, without having something in you."

Marlow shook his head.

"He was a mere sign, a portent. There was nothing in him. Just about
that time the word Thrift was to the fore. You know the power of words.
We pass through periods dominated by this or that word--it may be
development, or it may be competition, or education, or purity or
efficiency or even sanctity. It is the word of the time. Well just
then it was the word Thrift which was out in the streets walking arm in
arm with righteousness, the inseparable companion and backer up of all
such national catch-words, looking everybody in the eye as it were. The
very drabs of the pavement, poor things, didn't escape the
fascination... However! ... Well the greatest portion of the press
were screeching in all possible tones, like a confounded company of
parrots instructed by some devil with a taste for practical jokes, that
the financier de Barral was helping the great moral evolution of our
character towards the newly-discovered virtue of Thrift. He was helping
it by all these great establishments of his, which made the moral merits
of Thrift manifest to the most callous hearts, simply by promising to
pay ten per cent, interest on all deposits. And you didn't want
necessarily to belong to the well-to-do classes in order to participate
in the advantages of virtue. If you had but a spare sixpence in the
world and went and gave it to de Barral it was Thrift! It's quite
likely that he himself believed it. He must have. It's inconceivable
that he alone should stand out against the infatuation of the whole
world. He hadn't enough intelligence for that. But to look at him one
couldn't tell..."

"You did see him then?" I said with some curiosity.

"I did. Strange, isn't it? It was only once, but as I sat with the
distressed Fyne who had suddenly resuscitated his name buried in my
memory with other dead label