“All right,” I said. “There is not enough work but plenty to eat. We’ll suppose it. What does that prove?”
Eyeing me intently, with some new interest, he hesitated, not as to what he would say but as to whether he should bother to say it.
“It proves,” he said, “that the country is rich. Nobody knows it. Nobody will believe it. The country is so rich that people may actually live without work.”
“That’s an interesting point of view,” I said. “Who are you?”
“Nobody,” he replied, with an oblique sneer. “A member of the Stock Exchange.”
“Oh!” I said, before I could catch it. And not to leave the conversation in that lurch I asked: “Do you know who those two men were who wrangled in the smoking compartment?”
“Editors,” he replied, cynically. “The younger one was Godkin of the Post. I’ve forgotten the other one’s name. Silly magpies! Pol-i-t-i-c-s, hell!”
At that instant the ferryboat bumped into her slip. The petulant man screwed his head half round, jerked a come-along nod to a girl who had been standing just behind us, and stalked off in a mild brain fit.
I had not noticed the girl before. She passed me to overtake her father,—I supposed it was her father,—and in passing she gave me a look which made me both hot and cold at once. It left me astonished, humiliated and angry. It was a full, open, estimating look, too impervious to be returned as it deserved and much too impersonal to be rude. It was worse than rude. I was an object and not a person. It occurred to me that either or both of us might have been stark nude and it would not have made the slightest difference.