him
when he thought the situation warranted it. Allen came readily enough,
walking into the office, shorn of his London frills, but evidently
retentive of the habit of keeping neat and clean. The eyes, too, had
altered, but not obviously, letting through, perhaps, a certain
disillusionment.

"What are you doing to my mills?" George wanted to know.

Allen, surprisingly, didn't once lose his temper, listening to George's
complaints without change of expression while he wandered about, his
eyes taking in each detail of the richly furnished office.

"The directors report that the men have refused to enter into a fair and
above-board cooeperative arrangement, and we've figured all along it was
turning the business over to them; taking money out of our own pockets.
It's a form of communism, and they throw it down. Why, Allen? I want
this straight."

Allen paused in his walk, and looked closely at George. There was no
change in his face even when he commenced to speak.

"A share in a business," he said, softly, "carries uncomfortable
responsibilities. You can't go to yourself, for instance, and say: 'Give
me more wages--more than the traffic will bear; then you sweat about it
in your office, but don't bother me in my cottage.'"

"You acknowledge it!" George cried.

Allen's face at last became a trifle animated.

"Why not--to you? Everybody's out to get it--the butcher, the baker, the
candlestick maker. The capitalist most of all. Why not the man that
turns the wheels?"

George whistled.

"You'd crush essential industries off the face of the earth! You'd go
back to the stone age!"

"Not," Allen answered, slowly, "as long as the profits of the past can
be got out of somebody's pockets."

"You'd grab capital!"

"Like a flash; and what are you going to do about it?"

"I'll tell you what I am going to do," George answered, "and I fancy a
lot of others will follow my example. I am going to get rid of those
stocks if I have to throw them out of the window, then you'll have no
gun to hold at my head."

"Throw too much away," Allen warned, "and you'll throw it all."

"The beautiful, pure social revolution!" George sneered. "You're less
honest than you were when you dropped everything to go to London for me.
What's the matter with you, Allen?"

Allen appraised again the comfortable room. Even now his expression
didn't alter materially.

"Nothing. I don't know. Unless the universal spirit of grab has got in
my ow