This compromise was adopted, and the effect of it was to give an immense impulse to private industry. While the question was being discussed few were willing to embark on an enterprise that might be declared illegal and be appropriated by the state. As soon, however, as private enterprise was indirectly sanctioned by the passage of this law it became clear that any individual might devote his leisure to the production of anything not satisfactorily produced by the state, and the result of this new departure was considerable, for it not only greatly increased the total wealth of the community but it stimulated the state to maintain and improve standards of manufacture, contributing all that is good in competition without tolerating those features of oppression and pauperism which had made competition so evil in our day.
And Masters became a great man in the community; for not only was he regarded as the author of private enterprise, but possessing the powers of organization and the judgment in selecting his fellow-workers essential to success, he soon became the head of numerous enterprises; and although he was unable at first to accumulate wealth in the shape of money, he did accumulate it in the shape of products of manufacture. Moreover, the fact that he could not accumulate it in the shape of money and that there was a limit to his power to accumulate it in the shape of products of manufacture, drove him to distribute his earnings among his neighbors with a prodigality so lavish that, possessing a naturally generous heart and an attractive manner, he became a man of enormous—some men said undue—influence in the state. Recently, too, owing to the establishment of a banking system, accumulation in private money became possible.
Masters had never married. His interests were so various and engrossing that he had not felt the need of a wife. Nor was he ever at a loss for a companion; the bath was his club; and a short evening—for he was an early riser—was comfortably spent in the society of those with whom he dined at the common table. But he was by no means insensible to feminine charm, and Neaera had not ineffectually aired her graces for his benefit.
Neaera had often decided that Masters was the best match in the country and had schemed to secure him; but she was aware of his sagacity and had so far refrained from any overture that might alienate him. She had, however, never failed to improve an opportunity for displaying her attractions in his presence, taking care to keep religiously away from him at such times lest he should guess the plot that lay at the bottom of all her performances. On more serious occasions she had had long and confidential conversations with him, chiefly on political subjects; she had indeed been one of his political lieutenants, but when engaged in politics she had studiously avoided the slightest symptoms of coquetry. Masters, on the contrary, had often allowed her to feel that he would gladly have made their relations more intimate. She had seen the big fish rise—a little lazily, it is true—at her cast; she had felt that upon a sufficiently dramatic occasion she could land him; and now it satisfied her sense of antithesis that so signal a defeat as that of her party that day might be converted by her skill into an individual victory.
It was about four in the afternoon—the hour when Masters should be leaving his office for his apartment. If she walked in the direction of the latter he would possibly overtake her; she did not wish to go to him; she preferred to meet him accidentally; it would not do for him to imagine she had counted on him. She walked, therefore, slowly and with a pretty air of concern along the street he usually took, wondering whether she would be favored by fortune before the arrest which she knew was being prepared for her. She felt that the events of the day would be likely to change the daily routine, even of so methodical a man as Masters, and was beginning to fear she would have to take refuge in his apartment, when she heard a step overtaking her, and to her great relief his big voice said:
"Why, Neaera, what are you doing here? I thought you were in the thick of it?"
Neaera looked up shyly and then down again.
"I am afraid all is over," she said very low.
"And where are you going?"
"I don't know."