"Is this a joke?"
"No, it's the gospel truth. But you needn't feel as though you had been singled out for persecution. Not at all. I'm a marked man as much as you. If the Intelligence Service of the Government detects an atom of intelligence in one of its agents, it makes it a special point always to ignore that agent's recommendations. Never mind. I wrote out my resignation this morning. Here it is. It goes to Washington at once."
"Surely, Pryor, you have other reasons for resigning the job?"
"Ah, now you're coming to it. For weeks past, I've been saturating my mind with radical literature. Tons of it. From professional motives solely, of course. After a studious and impartial consideration of facts and principles, I've come to a very curious pass."
"You don't mean to say that you've been converted!" said Robert, rising excitedly from his chair.
"Yes, I've been converted. Not to radicalism, mind. Personally, I'm a firm believer in the aristocratic state as championed by Plato, Ruskin, and Carlyle, the state in which the Government is carried on by those whose equipment best fits them to govern. We'll reach this state—in about a thousand years. Meanwhile, I've been converted not to radicalism, but to the view that the radicals are right in theory and the Government wrong in practice; the former right in demanding a complete restoration of civil liberty and an enormous grant of industrial liberty, the latter wrong in thwarting these demands."
After a few moments spent in digesting Pryor's astonishing admissions, Robert said:
"One good surprise deserves another."
"Fire away."
"I've just inherited two million dollars!"