what's your private opinion
of this man. You drew the character. What do you think of him as a
type, how would you classify him?"

"As the greatest criminal the world has yet produced," replied
Shirley without a moment's hesitation.

The financier looked at the girl in unfeigned astonishment.

"Criminal?" he echoed.

"Yes, criminal," repeated Shirley decisively. "He is avarice,
egotism, and ambition incarnate. He loves money because he loves
power, and he loves power more than his fellow man."

Ryder laughed uneasily. Decidedly, this girl had opinions of her
own which she was not backward to express.

"Isn't that rather strong?" he asked.

"I don't think so," replied Shirley. Then quickly she asked: "But
what does it matter? No such man exists."

"No, of course not," said Ryder, and he relapsed into silence.

Yet while he said nothing, the plutocrat was watching his visitor
closely from under his thick eyebrows. She seemed supremely
unconscious of his scrutiny. Her aristocratic, thoughtful face
gave no sign that any ulterior motive had actuated her evidently
very hostile attitude against him. That he was in her mind when
she drew the character of John Broderick there was no doubt
possible. No matter how she might evade the identification, he was
convinced he was the hero of her book. Why had she attacked him so
bitterly? At first, it occurred to him that blackmail might be her
object; she might be going to ask for money as the price of future
silence. Yet it needed but a glance at her refined and modest
demeanour to dispel that idea as absurd. Then he remembered, too,
that it was not she who had sought this interview, but himself.
No, she was no blackmailer. More probably she was a dreamer--one
of those meddling sociologists who, under pretence of bettering
the conditions of the working classes, stir up discontent and
bitterness of feeling. As such; she might prove more to be feared
than a mere blackmailer whom he could buy off with money. He knew
he was not popular, but he was no worse than the other captains of
industry. It was a cut-throat game at best. Competition was the
soul of commercial life, and if he had outwitted his competitors
and made himself richer than all of them, he was not a criminal
for that. But all these attacks in newspapers and books did not do
him any good. One day the people might take these demagogic
writings seriously and then there would be the devil to pay. He
took up the book