"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm afraid I've addled my brains trying to cultivate them, and what I'm more afraid of is that I've addled my common sense." She spoke with such gayety, with such a roguish twinkle, and curve of lip, that neither then nor later did he suspect that she was the heroine of her own tale. "Well, fire away. No, thanks, no more. I only drink tea to please you anyway. Tea is so much hot water to me." "Well, smoke." She pushed the box of cigarettes toward him. "I know you smoke a pipe, but I won't let my husband smoke one at home. It's bad for my curtains.... This is it--One of my friends, poor thing, has had a terrible experience: discovered that her husband has stolen the part of her little fortune whose income enabled them to do something more than keep alive. You see, it's a sad case. She believed in him, and he had always been the most honest creature in the world; and that's as much of a blow as the loss of the money." "What'd he do it for?" "Oh, I know so little about business ... he wanted to get rich too quickly I suppose ... speculated or something ... perhaps got into a hole. This has been a bad year." "Poor chap!" said Kirkpatriek reflectively. "You're not commiserating _him_?" "Ain't I, just? He done it, didn't he? He's got to pay the piper, hasn't he? Women don't know anything about the awful struggles and temptations of the rotten business world. He didn't do it because he wanted to, you can bet your life on that. He's just another poor victim of a vicious system. A fly in the same old web; same old fat spider in the middle! Not capital enough. Hard times and the little man goes under, no matter if he's a darn sight better fellow than the bloated beast on top--" "You mean if we were living in the Socialistic Utopia no man could go under?" "I mean just that. It's a sin and a shame, A fine young fellow--" "Remember, you don't know anything about him. He's not a bad sort and has always been quite honest before; but he's not very clever. If he were he wouldn't have got himself into a predicament. He had a good start, far better than nine-tenths of the millionaires in this country had in their youth." "Oh, I don't care anything about that. If all men were equally clever in chasing the almighty dollar there'd be no excuse for socialism. It's our job to displace the present rotten system of government with one in which the weak couldn't be crowded out, where all that are willing to work will have an equal chance--and those that ain't willing will have to work anyhow or starve.... One of the thousand things the matter with the present system is that the square man is so often in the round hole. In the socialized state every man will be guided to the place which exactly fits his abilities. No weaker to the wall there." "You think you can defy Nature to that extent!" "You bet."