He looked keenly at her, with a smile of delight.
'That also! The power which centres in the world's money-markets—plutocracy.'
In conversing with Sidwell, he had never before found an opportunity of uttering his vehement prejudices. The gentler side of his character had sometimes expressed itself, but those impulses which were vastly more significant lay hidden beneath the dissimulation he consistently practised. For the first time he was able to look into Sidwell's face with honest directness, and what he saw there strengthened his determination to talk on with the same freedom.
'You don't believe, then,' said Sidwell, 'that democracy is the proper name for the state into which we are passing?'
'Only if one can understand democracy as the opening of social privileges to free competition amongst men of trade. And social privilege is everything; home politics refer to nothing else.'
Fanny, true to the ingenuous principle of her years, put a direct question:
'Do you approve of real democracy, Mr. Peak?'
He answered with another question:
'Have you read the "Life of Phokion" in Plutarch?'
'No, I'm sorry to say.'