By the time Crystal stopped for him Ben had begun to feel like a child who has lost his mother in a museum, or as Dante might have felt if he had missed Virgil from his side.  When he bade Mrs. Dawson good night, she asked him to come back.

“Come and spend September here,” she said, as if it were a small thing.  “You can work all day if you like.  I sha’n’t disturb you, and you need never see a soul.  It will do you good.”

He was touched by the invitation, but of course he refused it.  He tried to explain tactfully, but clearly, why it was that he couldn’t do that sort of thing—­that the editor of Liberty did not take his holiday at Newport.

She understood, and sighed.  “Ah, yes,” she said.  “I’m like that man in mythology whom neither the sky nor the earth would receive.  I’m very lonely, Mr. Moreton.”

He found himself feeling sorry for her, as he followed a footman downstairs, his feet sinking into the carpets at each step.  Crystal in the blue car was at the door.  She was bareheaded and the wind had been blowing her hair about.

“Well,” she said, as he got in, “did you have a good time?  I’m sure you had a good dinner.”

“Excellent, but confusing.  I don’t quite get your friend.”

“You don’t understand Sophia?” Crystal’s tone expressed surprise.  “You mean her jewels and her footmen?  Why, Ben, it’s just like the fathers of this country who talked about all men being equal and yet were themselves slaveholders.  She sincerely believes those things in a way, and then it’s such a splendid role to play, and she enjoys that; and then it teases Freddie Dawson.  Freddie is rather sweet if he’s thoroughly unhappy, and this keeps him unhappy almost all the time.  Did she ask you to stay?  I meant her to.”

“Yes, she did; but of course I couldn’t.”

“Oh, Ben, why not?”

This brought them once more to the discussion of the barrier.  This time Ben felt he could make her see.  He said that she must look at it this way—­that in a war you could not go and stay in enemy country, however friendly your personal relations might be.  Well, as far as he was concerned this was a war, a class war.

They were headed for the Ocean Drive, and Crystal rounded a sharp turn before she answered seriously: 

“But I thought you didn’t believe in war.”

“I don’t,” he answered.  “I hate it—­I hate all violence.  We—­labor, I mean—­didn’t initiate this, but when men won’t see, when they have power and won’t stop abusing it, there is only one way to make—­”

“Why, Ben,” said Crystal, “you’re just a pacifist in other people’s quarrels, but as militaristic as can be in your own.  I’m not a pacifist, but I’m a better one than you, because I don’t believe in emphasizing any difference between human beings.  That’s why I want a League of Nations.  I hate gangs—­all women really do.  Little girls don’t form gangs like little boys.  Every settlement worker knows that.  I won’t have you say that I belong to the other group.  I won’t be classified.  I’m a human being—­and I intend to behave as such.”