eings of ours who have such a hard time getting on.
That would be real superiority--and our life now is so vain, so empty.
It's brutal, John."

"What do you propose?" he asked, curious as always when a new idea was
presented to him. And this was certainly new--apparently, philanthropy
without expense.

"You are master. You can do as you please. Why not put your great
combine on such a basis that it would bring an honest, just return to
you and the others, and would pay the highest possible wages, and would
give the people the benefit of what your genius for manufacturing and
for finance has made possible? I think we who are so comfortable and
never have to think of the necessaries of life forget how much a few
cents here and there mean to most people. And the things you control
mean all the difference between warmth and cold, between life and
death, John!"

As she talked he settled back into his chair, and his face hardened
into its unyielding expression. A preposterous project! Just like a
good, sentimental woman. Not philanthropy without expense, but
philanthropy at the expense both, of his fortune and of his position as
a master. To use his brain and his life for those ungrateful people
who derided his benefactions as either contributions to "the conscience
fund" or as indirect attempts at public bribery! He could not conceal
his impatience--though he did not venture to put it into words.

"If we--if you and I, John," she hurried on, leaning toward him in her
earnestness, "had something like that to live for, it might come to be
very different with us--and--I'm thinking of Gardiner most of all.
This'll ruin him some day. No one, NO ONE, can lead this kind of life
without being dragged down, without becoming selfish and sordid and
cruel."

"You don't understand," he said curtly, without looking at her. "I
never heard of such--such sentimentalism."

She winced and was silent, sat watching his bold, strong profile.
Presently she said in a changed, strange, strained voice: "What I
asked to see you for was--John, won't you put the prices--at least
where they were at the beginning of this dreadful winter?"

"Oh--I see!" he exclaimed. "You've been listening to the lies about
me."

"READING," she said, her eyes flashing at the insult in the accusation
that she had let people attack him to her.

"Well, reading then," he went on, wondering what he had said that
angered her. And he made an elaborate exp