"So that they can sit round the saloons longer," suggested Adelaide, and then she colored and dropped her eyes; she was repeating Ross's comment on this sort of "concession to the working classes." She had thought it particularly acute when he made it. Now—
"No doubt most of them will spend their time foolishly at first," Madelene conceded. "Working people have had to work so hard for others—twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, just to be allowed to live—that they've had really no free time at all; so they've had no chance to learn how to spend free time sensibly. But they'll learn, those of them that have capacity for improvement. Those that haven't will soon drop out."
"The factories can't make money on such a plan as that," said Adelaide, again repeating a remark of Ross's, but deliberately, because she believed it could be answered, wished to hear it answered.
"No, not dividends," replied Madelene. "But dividends are to be abolished in that department of the university, just as they are in the other departments. And the money the university needs is to come from tuition fees. Everyone is to pay for what he gets. Some one has to pay for it; why not the person who gets the benefit? Especially when the university's farms and workshops and factories give every student, man and woman, a chance to earn a good living. I tell you Adelaide, the time is coming when every kind of school except kindergarten will be self-supporting. And then you'll see a human race that is really fine, really capable, has a real standard of self-respect."
As Madelene talked, her face lighted up and all her latent magnetism was radiating. Adelaide, for no reason that was clear to her, yielded to a surge of impulse and, half-laughing, half in tears, suddenly kissed Madelene. "No wonder Arthur is mad about you, stark mad," she cried.
Madelene was for a moment surprised out of that perfect self-unconsciousness which is probably the rarest of human qualities, and which was her greatest charm to those who knew her well. She blushed furiously and angrily. Her and Arthur's love was to her most sacred, absolutely between themselves. When any outsider could observe them, even her sister Walpurga, she seemed so much the comrade and fellow-worker in her attitude toward him that people thought and spoke of their married life as "charming, but cold." Alone with him, she showed that which was for him alone—a passion whose strength had made him strong, as the great waves give their might to the swimmer who does not shrink from adventuring them. Adelaide's impulsive remark, had violated her profoundest modesty; and in the shock she showed it.
"I beg your pardon!" exclaimed Adelaide, though she did not realize wherein she had offended. Love was an unexplored, an unsuspected mystery to her then—the more a mystery because she thought she knew from having read about it and discussed it and reasoned about it.
"Oh, I understand," said Madelene, contrite for her betraying expression. "Only—some day—when you really fall in love—you'll know why I was startled."
Adelaide shrank within herself. "Even Madelene," thought she, "who has not a glance for other people's affairs, knows how it is between Dory and me."
It was Madelene's turn to be repentant and apologetic. "I didn't mean quite that," she stammered. "Of course I know you care for Dory—"