“You know,” he said, “there isn’t any reason why you should have me to dine just because Crystal says so.  I do want to thank you for the check you sent in to us for the strike fund.  It will do a lot of good.”

“Oh, that,” replied Mrs. Dawson.  “They are fighting all our battles for us.”

“It cheered us up in the office.  I wanted to tell you, and now I think I’ll go.  I dare say you are dining out, anyhow—­”

Her eyes flashed at him.  “Dining out!” she exclaimed, as if the suggestion insulted her.  “You evidently don’t know me.  I never dine out.  I have nothing in common with these people.  I lead a very lonely life.  You do me a favor by staying.  You and I could exchange ideas.  There is no one in Newport whom I can talk to—­reactionaries.”

“Miss Cord is not exactly a reactionary,” said Ben, sitting down.

Mrs. Dawson smiled.  “Crystal is not a reactionary; Crystal is a child,” she replied.  “But what can you expect of William Cord’s daughter?  He is a dangerous and disintegrating force—­cold—­cynical—­he feels not the slightest public responsibility for his possessions.”  Mrs. Dawson laid her hand on her heart as if it were weighted with all her jewels and footmen and palaces.  “Most Bourbons are cynical about human life, but he goes farther; he is cynical about his own wealth.  And that brings me to my quarrel with you, Mr. Moreton.  How could you let your brother spend his beautiful vigorous youth as a parasite to Cord’s vapid son?  Was that consistent with your beliefs?”

This attack on his consistency from a lady whose consistency seemed even more flagrant amused Ben, but as he listened he was obliged to admit that there was a great deal of good sense in what she had to say about David, whom she had met once or twice at the Cords’.  Ben was too candid and eager not to ask her before long the question that was in his mind—­how it was possible for a woman holding her views to be leading a life so opposed to them.

She was not at all offended, and even less at a loss for an answer.  “I am not a free agent, Mr. Moreton,” she said.  “Unhappily, before I began to think at all, I had undertaken certain obligations.  The law allows a woman to dispose of everything but her property while she is still a child.  I married at eighteen.”

It was a story not without interest and Mrs. Dawson told it well.  There does not live a man who would not have been interested.

They dined, not in the great dining room downstairs, nor even in the painted room from Sienna, but in a sort of loggia that opened from it, where, beyond the shaded lights, Ben could watch the moon rise out of the sea.

It was a perfect little meal, short, delicious, and quickly served by three servants.  He enjoyed it thoroughly, although he found his hostess a strangely confusing companion.  He would make up his mind that she was a sincere soul captured by her environment, when a freshly discovered jewel on her long fingers would shake his faith.  And he would just decide that she was a melodramatic fraud, when she would surprise him by her scholarly knowledge of social problems.  She had read deeply, knew several languages, and had known many of the European leaders.  Such phrases as “Jaures wrote me ten days before he died—­” were frequent, but not too frequent, on her lips.