“You see,” I said, “I’m a socialist. I don’t think this world was made for a small minority to dance on the faces of every one else.” “My dear fellow,” said the Rev. Gabbitas, “_I’m_ a socialist too. Who isn’t. But that doesn’t lead me to class hatred.” “You haven’t felt the heel of this confounded system. _I_ have.” “Ah!” said he; and catching him on that note came a rap at the front door, and, as he hung suspended, the sound of my mother letting some one in and a timid rap. “_Now_,” thought I, and stood up, resolutely, but he would not let me. “No, no, no!” said he. “It’s only for the Dorcas money.” He put his hand against my chest with an effect of physical compulsion, and cried, “Come in!” “Our talk’s just getting interesting,” he protested; and there entered Miss Ramell, an elderly little young lady who was mighty in Church help in Clayton. He greeted her—she took no notice of me—and went to his bureau, and I remained standing by my chair but unable to get out of the room. “I’m not interrupting?” asked Miss Ramell. “Not in the least,” he said; drew out the carriers and opened his desk. I could not help seeing what he did. I was so fretted by my impotence to leave him that at the moment it did not connect at all with the research of the morning that he was taking out money. I listened sullenly to his talk with Miss Ramell, and saw only, as they say in Wales, with the front of my eyes, the small flat drawer that had, it seemed, quite a number of sovereigns scattered over its floor. “They’re so unreasonable,” complained Miss Ramell. Who could be otherwise in a social organization that bordered on insanity? I turned away from them, put my foot on the fender, stuck my elbow on the plush-fringed mantelboard, and studied the photographs, pipes, and ash-trays that adorned it. What was it I had to think out before I went to the station? Of course! My mind made a queer little reluctant leap—it felt like being forced to leap over a bottomless chasm—and alighted upon the sovereigns that were just disappearing again as Mr. Gabbitas shut his drawer. “I won’t interrupt your talk further,” said Miss Ramell, receding doorward. Mr. Gabbitas played round her politely, and opened the door for her and conducted her into the passage, and for a moment or so I had the fullest sense of proximity to those—it seemed to me there must be ten or twelve—sovereigns. . . . The front door closed and he returned. My chance of escape had gone. § 4 “_I must_ be going,” I said, with a curiously reinforced desire to get away out of that room. “My dear chap!” he insisted, “I can’t think of it. Surely—there’s nothing to call you away.” Then with an evident desire to shift the venue of our talk, he asked, “You never told me what you thought of Burble’s little book.”