KISS.

"I've never felt so before," said Ned. "For about ten minutes I wanted to
go back and kill him."

"Why?"

"Because he is like a wall of iron in front of one. If he were a fat
hulking brute, as some of them are, I wouldn't have minded. I could have
pitied him and felt that he wasn't a fair specimen of Humanity. But this
man is a fair specimen in a way. He looks like a man and he talks like a
man and you feel him a man, only he's absolutely unable to understand
that the crowd are the same flesh and blood as he is and you know that
he'd wipe us down like ninepins if he could see he'd gain by it. He's all
brains and any heart he's got is only for his own friends. He is
Capitalism personified. He made me feel sick at heart at the hopelessness
of fighting such men in the old ways. I felt for a little while that the
only thing to do was to clear them out of the way as they'd clear us if
they were in our shoes."

"You've got over it soon."

"Of course," admitted Ned, with a laugh. "He can live for ever, for me,
now. It was a fool's thought. It's the system we're fighting, not the
products of it, and he's only a product just like the fat beasts we abuse
and the ignorant drunken bushmen he despises. I was worrying, as you call
it, or I shouldn't have even thought of it."

Ned was talking to Connie. After having had dinner at a restaurant with
his Trades Hall friend, to whom he related part of his morning's
interview, he had found himself with two or three hours on his hands. So
he had turned his steps towards the Strattons, longing for sympathy and
comfort, being strangely depressed and miserable without being able to
think out just how he felt.

He found Mrs. Stratton writing in her snug parlour. The rooms had the
same general appearance that they had two years before. The house, seen
by daylight for the first time, was embowered in trees and fringed back
and front with pretty flower beds and miniature lawns. Connie herself was
fair and fresh as ever and wore a loose robe of daintily flowered stuff;
the years had passed lightly over her, adding to rather than detracting
from the charms of her presence. She welcomed him warmly and with her
inimitable tact, seeing his trouble, told him how they all were,
including that Josie had married and had a beautiful baby, adding with a
flush that she herself had set Josie a bad example and bringing in the
example for Ned to admire. The other children were boating with George