It was this study of conditions that finally gave her the key to his design in life, for it developed as their acquaintance grew that this clear-headed, cultivated, thoughtful man held strange views as to the ordinary things of life, the things which she had always accepted as fundamental and unchangeable as the solid earth or the vaguely comprehended but wholly accepted revolution of the spheres. In fact, he held that the conditions of modern life, the relations of people in mass, which she had somehow always considered as almost perfect and, indeed, divinely established, were absolutely outworn and fundamentally unrighteous and unjust. She at first did not take him seriously. She could not. To find a pleasant and, indeed, rather eloquent-spoken young man denounce as wicked and vile usurpation the establishment of competitive enterprises, and the accumulation of capital by captains of industry, appeared to her almost impious. Yet, there he sat with burning eyes and thrilling voice denouncing the very things she had always considered most commendable. "Why, that is Socialism, isn't it?" she asked, feeling that if she could convict him of this somewhat vaguely comprehended term she would prove her old foundations unshaken. Wolffert smiled. He was very good-looking when he smiled. "No, not exactly--if it is, it is only an elementary and individual kind of Socialism; but it is Socialism so far as it is based on a profound desire to reconstruct society and to place it on a natural and equitable social foundation where every one shall have a chance to work and to reap the fruit of such work." "What is Socialism?" she demanded suddenly. "It is not what you mean by the term," he laughed. "It is not taking the property of those who have worked for it and giving to those who neither have worked nor will work--that is what you have in mind." "Precisely," she nodded. "It is--at least, the Socialism I mean--the application of the same method of general order by the people at large to labor and the product of labor: property--that is now employed in Government. The reconstruction of the present methods so that all should participate both in the labor, and in the product." He went on to picture glowingly the consequences of this Utopian scheme when all men should work and all should reap. But though he made it appear easy enough to him, Eleanor Leigh's practical little head saw the difficulties and the flaws much more readily than the perfect result which he appeared to find so certain. "You cannot reconstruct human nature," she protested, "and when you shall have gotten your system thoroughly under way, those who have gotten in positions of power will use their advantage for their own benefit, and then you will still have to begin all over again." But Wolffert was certain of the result and pointed out the work of his friend John Marvel as a proof of his theory.