“Different,” finished the girl gently.
“Humph! Different, eh?”
“Yes. Perhaps by that time you will––you will love everybody,” she murmured. “Perhaps you won’t go on piling up big mountains of money that you can’t use, and that you won’t let anybody else use.”
Ames frowned upon her. “Yes?” he said ironically.
“You will know then that Jesus founded his great empire on love. Your empire, you know, is human business. But you will find that such empires crumble and fall. And yours will, like all the rest.”
“Say,” he exclaimed, turning full upon her and seeming to bear her down by his tremendous personality, “you young and inexperienced reformers might learn a few things, too, if your prejudices could be surmounted. Has it ever occurred to you 140 that we men of business think not so much about accumulating money as about achieving success? Do you suppose you could understand that money-making is but a side issue with us?”
“Achieving success!” she echoed, looking wonderingly at him. “Well––are you––a success?”
He started to reply. Then he checked himself. A flush stole across his face. Then his eyes narrowed.
“Yes,” the girl went on, as if in quiet soliloquy, “I suppose you are––a tremendous worldly success. And this Ball––it is a splendid success, too. Thousands of dollars will be raised for the poor. And then, next year, the same thing will have to be done again. Your charities cost you hundreds of millions every year up here. And, meantime, you rich men will go right on making more money at the expense of your fellow-men––and you will give a little of it to the poor when the next Charity Ball comes around. It’s like a circle, isn’t it?” she said, smiling queerly up at him. “It has no end, you know.”
Ames had now decided to swallow his annoyance and meet the girl with the lance of frivolity. “Yes, I guess that’s so,” he began. “But of course you will admit that the world is slowly getting better, and that world-progress must of necessity be gradual. We can’t reform all in a minute, can we?”