"Yes," she said in a low voice. "I am loyal to the thing I have sworn to accomplish."
"I am afraid," he said, "that for the past few days I have been thinking more of my own welfare than of that of the proletariat."
"I am afraid that at heart you are still bourgeois," she said, "and that you cannot yet help looking upon the proletariat with contempt."
"What makes you say that?" he asked. "I am sure that I said nothing to warrant it."
"Often a slight unconscious inflection in the use of a word alters the significance of a whole statement, revealing a speaker's secret thoughts."
Colt laughed good naturedly. "You are a dangerous person to talk to," he said. "Am I to be shot at sunrise?"
She looked at him seriously. "You are different from the others," she said. "I think you could never imagine how suspicious they are. What I have said is only in the way of warning you to watch your every word when you are talking with them. Some of them are narrow and ignorant, and they are already suspicious of you because of your antecedents. They are sensitively jealous of a new importance which they believe their class has attained."
"Their class?" he asked. "I thought you told me once that you were of the proletariat?"
If he had thought that he had surprised her and that she would show embarrassment, he was mistaken. She met his eyes squarely and without wavering. "I am," she said, "but I can still see the weaknesses of my class."
He looked at her steadily for a long moment, the shadow of a smile touching his lips. "I do not believe—"