Of course that wouldn’t do. After the meal they got Paul settled in an arm-chair, and Bunny said, “Look here, Paul, I’ve been trying to understand about this Russian business. I’m quarrelling with most everyone I know about it, and I counted on you for the truth. So please do tell us about it—just what happened to you.” Paul sat with his head lying back. His face had always been sombre, a prominent nose and wide mouth with a tendency to droop at the corners; haggard as he was, this tendency was accentuated, he looked like a mask of sorrow. “What happened to me?” he said, in his slow voice; and then he seemed to raise himself to the effort of recalling it. “I’ll tell you what happened, son; I was kidnapped.” “Kidnapped!” The two of them echoed the word together. “Yes, just that. I thought I went into the army to put down the Kaiser, but I was kidnapped by some Wall Street bankers, and put to work as a strike-breaker, a scab.” Ruth and Bunny could only sit and gaze at Paul, and wait for him to say what he meant by these strange words. “You remember our oil strike, Bunny? Those guards the Federation sent up here—husky fellows, with plenty of guns, and good warm clothes, rain-coats and water-proof hats and everything. Well, that’s what I’ve been doing for a year and a half—putting down a strike for Wall Street bankers. The guards here at Paradise got ten dollars a day, and if they didn’t like it, they could quit; but I got thirty a month and beans, and if I tried to quit they’d have shot me. That was the cinch the bankers had.” Again there was a pause. Paul had closed his eyes, and he told a part of his story that way, looking at things he saw inside his mind. “First thing, the allies took the city of Vladivostok. The strikers had that city, with a perfectly good government, everything orderly and fine. They didn’t make much resistance—they were too surprised at our behavior. We shot a few longshoremen, who tried to defend one building, and the strikers had a big funeral with a procession; they brought the red coffins to the American consulate with banners that asked us why we had shot their people. It happened to be the Fourth of July, and we were celebrating our revolution; why had we overthrown theirs? Of course we couldn’t answer; none of us knew why we had done it; but little by little we began to find out.” Paul paused, and waited so long that Bunny thought he wasn’t going on. “Why, Paul?”