"These barbarities are detestable. No one can condemn them more severely than I," Doctor Bruck rejoined, in a tone as cold as her own, "but——"
"Well, ’but’? You still maintain that we women of the capitalists’ families have provoked them?"
"Yes, Frau President. You have deterred the capitalist from coming to the assistance of his people when their demand was not unreasonable, not one of those extravagant requirements that at present cast suspicion and discredit upon the cause of an entire party. They did not ask for charity, but simply to be allowed, with the help of their employer, to struggle upwards to a happier daily life."
The old lady tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and said, kindly, but in a curt, decisive tone, evidently intended to cut short all discussion, "You are an idealist, Herr Doctor."
"Only a philanthropist," he rejoined, with a faint smile, and took his hat to go.
Flora had turned her back to him, and walked to the other window. There never was a woman’s face more fitted to express enmity than was that clear-cut profile, that mouth so closely shut over the teeth. Had not the man plainly said that she had laboriously sought to collect the ideas of others?—she, with her talents! To be sure, she had never soiled her dainty foot with the dust of her brother-in-law’s factory; it was true that she knew nothing of the life of those people whom the clamour for reform had assembled beneath one banner, where they were grown to be a power that thrust itself like a wedge into social order, threatening to shatter it. And why need she know by sight and contact what she described? Nonsense! Of what use, then, were intellect and imagination? Until to-day the doctor had never uttered a syllable with regard to her literary efforts,—"from timid reverence," she had supposed,—and now he suddenly treated her work with such scant courtesy,—_he_! "I cannot conceive, grandmamma," she exclaimed, with flashing eyes, "how you can dignify him with the title of idealist. To my mind, Bruck handles the great subject prosaically enough. According to his plan, we must instantly strip ourselves of every elegance and comfort, and dress in sackcloth and ashes; never must we indulge in intellectual pursuits, but must concoct soup for the poor. To insist upon quiet and retirement in our own park is a deadly sin; of course we must encourage the hopeful school-children to romp and play directly underneath our windows, etc., etc.; and if we are not docile, he threatens us with a ghost at our doors." She laughed a short, hard laugh. "Our philanthropist overshoots the mark terribly with these sympathies of his. If the conflict that he foretells ever really comes to pass, the ghost will make as short work with him as with us."