hat?" asked Ned, puzzled.

"Don't razzle-dazzle!" repeated Connie, laughing. "Don't dance on
champagne, like many of the society gems?"

"The men, you mean."

"The men! My dear Ned, you ought to know a little more about high life
and then you'd appreciate the Strongs. I've seen a dozen fashionable
women, young and old, perfectly intoxicated at a single fashionable ball.
As for the men, most of them haven't any higher idea of happiness than a
drunken debauch. While as for fashionable morality the less you say about
it the better. And the worst of the lot are among the canting ones. The
Strongs and their set at least are decent people. Wealth and poverty both
seem to degrade most of us."

"Ah, well, it can't last so very much longer," remarked Ned.

"It could if it weren't for the way both sides are being driven,"
answered Connie. "These fat wine-soaked capitalists would give in
whenever the workmen showed a bold front if cast-iron capitalists like
Strong didn't force them into the fight and keep them fighting. And you
know yourself that while workmen get a little what they want they never
dream of objecting to greater injustices. And if it weren't for the new
ideas workmen would go on soaking themselves with drink and vice and
become as unable to make a change as the depraved wealthy are to resist a
change. Everything helps to make up the movement."

"I know I'm inconsistent," she went on. "I talk angrily myself often but
it's not right to feel hard against anybody. These other people can't
help it, any more than a thief can help it or a poor girl on the streets.
They're not happy as they might be, either. And if they were, I think
it's better to suffer for the Cause than to have an easy time by opposing
it. I'd sooner be Geisner than Strong."

"What a comparison!" cried Ned.

"Of one thing I'm sure," continued Connie, "that it is noble to go to
prison in resisting injustice, that suffering itself becomes a glory if
one bears it bravely for others. For I have heard Geisner say, often,
that when penalties cease to intimidate and when men generally rise
superior to unjust laws those special injustices are as good as
overthrown. We must all do our best to prevent anything being done which
is unmanly in itself. If we try to do that prison is no disgrace and
death itself isn't very terrible."

"I know you mean this for me," said Ned, smiling. "I didn't mind much,
you know, before. I was ready for the medicine. But,