"We'll say eagle, as he's dead. When he died, there was a split in the O.A.D., which he had dominated and used for years—and mighty little he let old Shotwell have, I understand, in return for doing the dirty work. Well, Fosdick finally cooked up that investigation, frightened everybody into fits, won out, beat down the Galloway crowd, threw out Shotwell and put in this young Western fellow."
"What is the O.A.D.?"
"You must have seen the building, the advertisements everywhere—knight in armor beating off specters of want. It's an insurance company."
"I thought insurance companies were to insure people."
"Not at all," replied Morris. "That's what people think they're for—just as they think steel companies are to make steel, and coal companies to mine coal, and railway companies to carry freight and passengers. But all that, my dear fellow, is simply incidental. They're really to mass big sums of money for our great financiers to scramble for."
"How interesting," said Raphael in an uninterested tone. "Some time I must try to learn about those things. Then your cousin has divorced her husband? That's the tragedy I saw in her face."
"Tragedy!" Morris laughed outright. "There you go again, Boris. You're always turning your imagination loose."
"To explore the mysteries my eyes find, my dear Joe," said Boris, unruffled. "You people—the great mass of the human race—go through the world blindfold—blindfolded by ignorance, by prejudice, by letting your stupid brain tell your eyes what they are seeing instead of letting your eyes tell your brain."
"I never heard there was much to Neva Carlin."
"Naturally," replied Boris. "Not all the people who have individuality, personality, mind and heart, beat a drum and march in the middle of the street to inform the world of the fact. As for emotions—real emotions—they don't shriek and weep; they hide and are dumb. I, who let my eyes see for themselves, look at this woman and see beauty barefoot on the hot plowshares. And you—do not look and, therefore, see nothing."