She seemed to have submitted to his choice of a topic. There was no touch of expostulation in the voice with which she answered him. “I see what you think you mean,” she said.
“Think!” he responded, with self-confident emphasis. “I'm not 'thinking.' I'm reading an open book. As I say, you're not contented--you're not happy; you don't try to pretend that you are. But all the same, though you hate it, you accept it. You think that you really must obey your notice-boards. Now what I tell you you ought to do is to take a different view. Why should you put up all this barbed wire between yourself and your friends? It doesn't do anybody else any good--and it does you harm. Why, for example, should Plowden be free to take things from me, and you not?”
She glanced at him, with a cold half-smile in her eye. “Unfortunately I was not asked to join your Board.”
He pressed his lips tightly together, and regarded her meditatively as he turned these words over in his mind. “What I'm doing for Plowden,” he said with slow vagueness meanwhile, “it isn't so much because he's on the Board. He's of no special use to me there. But he was nice to me at a time when that meant everything in the world to me--and I don't forget things of that sort. Besides, I like him--and it pleases me to let him in for a share of my good fortune. See? It's my way of enjoying myself. Well now, I like you too, and why shouldn't I be allowed to let you in also for a share of that good fortune? You think there's a difference, but I tell you it's imaginary--pure moonshine. Why, the very people whose opinion you're afraid of--what did they do themselves when the South African craze was on? I'm told that the scum of the earth had only to own some Chartered shares, and pretend to be 'in the know' about them--and they could dine with as many duchesses as they liked. I knew one or two of the men who were in that deal--I wouldn't have them in my house--but it seems there wasn't any other house they couldn't go to in London.”
“Oh yes, there were many houses,” she interposed. “It wasn't a nice exhibition that society made of itself--one admits that,--but it was only one set that quite lost their heads. There are all kinds of sets, you know. And--I don't think I see your application, in any event. The craze, as you call it, was all on a business basis. People ran after those who could tell them which shares were going up, and they gambled in those shares. That was all, wasn't it?”