“Too quiet?  Nellie was telling me something of him once.”

“Yes.  He’s very quiet at home.  So is his wife.  He reads considerably.  She is musical.  They have their own set, quite a pleasant one.  And fashionable society can rave and splutter but is kept carefully outside their door.  They don’t razzle-dazzle, at any rate.”

“Don’t what?” 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, somehow, since I’ve been here, I’ve got to feel quite eager to be locked up.  I shall be disappointed if it doesn’t come off.”  He laughed cheerfully.