. It was no longer
diffidence and misplaced consideration that moved him permanently to
establish the most difficult of barriers between them; it was pride now,
for in her first stormy, moments in the train he had seen farther into
her thoughts than he dared let himself realize.

CHAPTER XVII

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

The day after the wedding, as Arthur was going home from work, he saw
Ross on the lofty seat of a dogcart, driving toward him along lower
Monroe Street. His anger instantly flamed and flared; he crushed an oath
between his teeth and glanced about for some way to avoid the humiliating
meeting. But there was no cross street between him and the on-coming
cart. Pride, or vanity, came to his support, as soon as he was convinced
that escape was impossible. With an air that was too near to defiance to
create the intended impression of indifference, he swung along and, just
as the cart was passing, glanced at his high-enthroned former friend.

Ross had not seen him until their eyes met. He drew his horse in so
sharply that it reared and pawed in amazement and indignation at the
bit's coarse insult to thoroughbred instincts for courteous treatment. He
knew Arthur was at work in the factory; but he did not expect to see him
in workman's dress, with a dinner pail in his hand. And from his height,
he, clad in the carefully careless, ostentatiously unostentatious
garments of the "perfect gentleman," gazed speechless at the spectacle.
Arthur reddened violently. Not all the daily contrasts thrust upon him in
those months at the cooperage had so brought home to his soul the
differences of caste. And there came to him for the first time that
hatred of inequalities which, repulsive though it is in theory, is yet
the true nerver of the strong right arm of progress. It is as
characteristic of the homely, human countenance of Democracy as the
supercilious smirk is of the homely, inhuman countenance of caste.
Arthur did not want to get up where Ross was seated in such elegant
state; he wanted to tear Ross, all the Rosses down. "The damn fool!" he
fumed. "He goes lounging about, wasting the money _we_ make. It's all
wrong. And if we weren't a herd of tame asses, we wouldn't permit it."

And now he began to feel that he was the superior of this showy idler,
that his own garments and dinner pail and used hands were the titles to a
nobility which could justly look down upon those who filched from the
treasury of the toil