Piers stared at his guest with his round, bloodshot eyes. He was a sincere man, and stupid. He reached his conclusions by processes which had nothing to do with thought, and when someone talked like this—attacking his belief that it was wrong to break up his meetings and right to break up the other man's—he felt as he did at a conjurer's performance: that it was all very clever, but a sensible person knew it was a trick, even though he could not explain how it was done.
"I'm not much good at an argument," he said, "but I know what's right. I know what the country needs, and if you show favoritism to these disloyal fellows I shall vote against you next time, I tell you frankly."
Lydia, hearing by the tones that the conversation across the table promised more vitality than her waning game with Gore about the barbarian epithet, dropped her own sentence and answered, "No one really believes in equality who's on top. I believe in special privilege."
O'Bannon, who had been contemptuously annoyed with Piers, was amused at Lydia's frankness as she bent her head to look at him under the candle shades and the light gleamed in her eyes and flashed on the emeralds on her forehead. Beauty, after all, is the greatest special privilege of all.
"That's what I said," he returned. "No one honestly believes in my platform—the equal administration of the present laws."
"I do," said Piers. "I do—everyone does."
O'Bannon glanced at him, and deciding that it wasn't worth while to take him round the circle again let the sentence drop.
"Do you believe in it yourself, Mr. O'Bannon?" asked Lydia, and she stretched out a slim young arm and moved the candle so that she could look straight at him or he at her. "I mean, if you caught some friend smuggling—me, for example—would you be as implacable as if you caught my dressmaker?"
"More so; you would have less excuse."
She laughed and shook her head.