“Have I made the meaning clear?” he asked.

He hoped she would reply that he had not, though this would have indicated a partial defeat in the object he had—­to put the complex thing so plainly that no one could fail to understand.  But she answered, “Yes.”

He congratulated himself that his overestimate of her ignorance of affairs had not lured him into giving her the names of the parties at interest to transcribe.  But did she really understand?  To test her, he said: 

“What do you think of it?”

“That it’s wicked,” replied she, without hesitation and in her small, quiet voice.

He laughed.  In a way this girl, sitting there—­this inconsequential and negligible atom—­typefied the masses of mankind against whom that secret agreement was directed.  They, the feeble and powerless ones, with their necks ever bent under the yoke of the mighty and their feet ever stumbling into the traps of the crafty—­they, too, would utter an impotent “Wicked!” if they knew.  His voice had the note of gentle raillery in it as he said: 

“No—­not wicked.  Just business.”

She was looking down at her book, her face expressionless.  A few moments before he would have said it was an empty face.  Now it seemed to him sphynxlike.

“Just business,” he repeated.  “It is going to take money from those who don’t know how to keep or to spend it and give it to those who do know how.  The money will go for building up civilization, instead of for beer and for bargain-trough finery to make working men’s wives and daughters look cheap and nasty.”

She was silent.

“Now, do you understand?”

“I understand what you said.”  She looked at him as she spoke.  He wondered how he could have fancied those lack-luster eyes beautiful or capable of expression.

“You don’t believe it?” he asked.

“No,” said she.  And suddenly in those eyes, gazing now into space, there came the unutterably melancholy look—­heavy-lidded from heartache, weary-wise from long, long and bitter, experiences.  Yet she still looked young—­girlishly young—­but it was the youthful look the classic Greek sculptors tried to give their young goddesses—­the youth without beginning or end—­younger than a baby’s, older than the oldest of the sons of men.  He mocked himself for the fancies this queer creature inspired in him; but she none the less made him uneasy.

“You don’t believe it?” he repeated.

“No,” she answered again.  “My father has taught me—­some things.”

He drummed impatiently on the table.  He resented her impertinence—­for, like all men of clear and positive mind, he regarded contradiction as in one aspect impudent, in another aspect evidence of the folly of his contradictor.  Then he gave a short laugh—­the confessing laugh of the clever man who has tried to believe his own sophistries and has failed.  “Well—­neither do I believe it,” said he.  “Now, to get the thing typewritten.”