As Benham looked up he met her eyes.  “In this case,” he answered, with a note of austerity, as if he were impatient of contradiction, “the advantage to the public would seem to be the only one worth considering.”

For an instant a wild impulse, born of suffering nerves, passed through Corinna’s mind.  She longed to cry out in the tone of Julius Gershom, “Oh, damn the public!”—­but instead she remarked in the formal accents her grandmother had employed to smooth over awkward impulses, “Isn’t it ridiculous that we can never get away from Gideon Vetch?”

The Judge laughed softly.  “He has a pushing manner,” he returned; and then, still curiously pursuing the subject:  “Perhaps, he may get his revenge at the meeting Thursday night.”

“Is there to be a meeting?” retorted Corinna indifferently.  She was thinking, “When John is eighty he will look like Father.  I shall be seventy-eight when he is eighty.  All those years to live, and nothing in them but little pleasures, little kindnesses, little plans and ambitions.  Charity boards and committee meetings and bridge.  That is what life is—­just pretending that little things are important.”

“That’s the strikers’ meeting,” the Judge was saying over his glass of sherry.  “The next one is John’s idea.  We hope to arbitrate.  If we can get Vetch interested there may be a settlement of some sort.”

“So it’s Vetch again!  Oh, I am getting so tired of the name of Gideon Vetch!” laughed Corinna.  And she thought, “If only I didn’t have to play on the flute all my life.  If I could only stop playing dance music for a little while, and break out into a funeral march!”

“He has already agreed to come,” said Benham, “but I expect nothing from him.  I have formed the habit of expecting nothing from Vetch.”

“Well, I don’t know,” replied the Judge.  “We may persuade him to stand firm, if there hasn’t been an understanding between him and those people.”  The old gentleman always used the expression “those people” for persons of whose opinions he disapproved.

“You know what I think of Vetch,” rejoined Benham, with a shrug.

It seemed to Corinna, watching Benham with her thoughtful gaze, that the subject would never change, that they would argue all night over their foolish strike and their tiresome meeting, and over what this Gideon Vetch might or might not do in some problematic situation.  What sentimentalists men were!  They couldn’t understand, after the experience of a million years, that the only things that really counted in life were human relations.  They were obliged to go on playing a game of bluff with their consecrated superstitions—­playing—­playing—­playing—­and yet hiding behind some graven image of authority which they had built out of stone.  Sentimental, yes, and pathetic too, when one thought of it with patience.