Piers had used the word "socialist" as a hate word, and expected to hear O'Bannon repudiate the suggestion as an insult. Instead he denied it as a fact.
"No," he said, "I'm not a socialist. I think you'll find lawyers conservative as a general thing. I believe in my platform--the equal administration of the present laws. That's radical enough--for the present."
Piers gave a slight snort. Everyone, he said, believed in that.
"I don't find they do--it isn't my experience," answered O'Bannon. "Some fellows broke up a socialist meeting the other evening in New York, and no one was punished, although not only were people injured, but even property was damaged." Eleanor was the only person who caught the "even." "You know very well that if the socialists broke in on a meeting of well-to-do citizens they would be sent up the river."
Piers stared at his guest with his round, bloodshot eyes. He was a sincere man, and stupid. He reached his conclusions by processes which had nothing to do with thought, and when someone talked like this--attacking his belief that it was wrong to break up his meetings and right to break up the other man's--he felt as he did at a conjurer's performance: that it was all very clever, but a sensible person knew it was a trick, even though he could not explain how it was done.
"I'm not much good at an argument," he said, "but I know what's right. I know what the country needs, and if you show favoritism to these disloyal fellows I shall vote against you next time, I tell you frankly."
Lydia, hearing by the tones that the conversation across the table promised more vitality than her waning game with Gore about the barbarian epithet, dropped her own sentence and answered, "No one really believes in equality who's on top. I believe in special privilege."
O'Bannon, who had been contemptuously annoyed with Piers, was amused at Lydia's frankness as she bent her head to look at him under the candle shades and the light gleamed in her eyes and flashed on the emeralds on her forehead. Beauty, after all, is the greatest special privilege of all.
"That's what I said," he returned. "No one honestly believes in my platform--the equal administration of the present laws."