"Why, the State. It requires very little imagination to see how easy it would be to put away a certain sum each year for that. . . . A question of how much you charge the final purchaser. . . . And the profiteer goes out of the picture. . . . That's what we're aiming at; that is what is coming. . . . No more men like the gentleman sitting three tables away--just behind you; no more of the Baxters fattening on sweated labour." His deep-set eyes were gleaming at the vision he saw, and Vane felt a sense of futility. "Even assuming your view is right, Mr. Ramage," he remarked slowly, "do you really think that you, and the few like you, will ever hold the mob? . . . You may make your new England, but you'll make it over rivers of blood, unless we all of us--you, as well as we--see through the glass a little less darkly than we do now. . . ." "Every great movement has its price," returned the other, staring at him gravely. "Price!" Vane's laugh was short and bitter. "Have you ever seen a battalion, Mr. Ramage, that has been caught under machine-gun fire?" "And have _you_, Captain Vane, ever seen the hovels in which some of our workers live?" "And you really think that by exchanging private ownership for a soulless bureaucracy you find salvation?" said Vane shortly. "You're rather optimistic, aren't you, on the subject of Government departments? . . ." "I'm not thinking of this Government, Captain Vane," he remarked quietly. He looked at his watch and rose. "I'm glad to have met you," he said holding out his hand. "It's the vested interest that is at the root of the whole evil--that stands between the old order and the new. Therefore the vested interest must go." . . . He turned to his hostess. "I'm sorry to run away like this, Mrs. Smallwood, but--I'm a busy man. . . ." She rose at once; nothing would have induced her to forgo walking through the restaurant with him. Later she would describe the progress to her intimates in her usual staccato utterances, like a goat hopping from crag to crag. "My dear. . . . So thrilling. . . . He means wholesale murder. . . . Told us so. . . . And there was a man close by, watching him all the time. . . . A Government spy probably. . . . Do you think I shall be arrested? . . . If only he allows Bill and me to escape when it comes. . . . The revolution, I mean. . . . I think Monte is the place. . . . But one never knows. . . . Probably the croupiers will be armed with pistols, or something dreadful. . . . Except that if it's the labouring classes who are rising, we ought to shoot the croupiers. . . . It is so difficult to know what to do." Vane turned to follow her, as she threaded her way between the tables, and at that moment he saw Joan. The grey eyes were fixed on him mockingly, and he felt as if everyone in the room must hear the sudden thumping of his heart. With a murmured apology to his hostess, he left her and crossed to Joan's table.