Conrad apparently judged it best to speak.  “I think they were very foolish to strike—­at this time, when the Elevated roads can do the work.”

“Oh, at this time, heigh!  And I suppose they think over there on the East Side that it ’d been wise to strike before we got the Elevated.”  Conrad again refused to answer, and his father roared, “What do you think?”

“I think a strike is always bad business.  It’s war; but sometimes there don’t seem any other way for the workingmen to get justice.  They say that sometimes strikes do raise the wages, after a while.”

“Those lazy devils were paid enough already,” shrieked the old man.

“They got two dollars a day.  How much do you think they ought to ‘a’ got?  Twenty?”

Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his father.  But he decided to answer.  “The men say that with partial work, and fines, and other things, they get sometimes a dollar, and sometimes ninety cents a day.”

“They lie, and you know they lie,” said his father, rising and coming toward him.  “And what do you think the upshot of it all will be, after they’ve ruined business for another week, and made people hire hacks, and stolen the money of honest men?  How is it going to end?”

“They will have to give in.”

“Oh, give in, heigh!  And what will you say then, I should like to know?  How will you feel about it then?  Speak!”

“I shall feel as I do now.  I know you don’t think that way, and I don’t blame you—­or anybody.  But if I have got to say how I shall feel, why, I shall feel sorry they didn’t succeed, for I believe they have a righteous cause, though they go the wrong way to help themselves.”

His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his teeth set.  “Do you dare so say that to me?”

“Yes.  I can’t help it.  I pity them; my whole heart is with those poor men.”

“You impudent puppy!” shouted the old man.  He lifted his hand and struck his son in the face.  Conrad caught his hand with his own left, and, while the blood began to trickle from a wound that Christine’s intaglio ring had made in his temple, he looked at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and said, “Father!”

The old man wrenched his fist away and ran out of the house.  He remembered his address now, and he gave it as he plunged into the coupe.  He trembled with his evil passion, and glared out of the windows at the passers as he drove home; he only saw Conrad’s mild, grieving, wondering eyes, and the blood slowly trickling from the wound in his temple.

Conrad went to the neat-set bowl in Fulkerson’s comfortable room and washed the blood away, and kept bathing the wound with the cold water till it stopped bleeding.  The cut was not deep, and he thought he would not put anything on it.  After a while he locked up the office and started out, he hardly knew where.  But he walked on, in the direction he had taken, till he found himself in Union Square, on the pavement in front of Brentano’s.  It seemed to him that he heard some one calling gently to him, “Mr. Dryfoos!”