“Why didn’t you telephone me?”
“If I hadn’t cared more for you than I do for my job and the Big Idea thrown in I could have settled it that way. But, Grant, I do.”
“I believe you. But why this sudden worry over me? I was merely spending the evening at a neighbor’s.”
“Yes—at Transley’s. Transley was in town, and Mrs. Transley is—not responsible—where you are concerned.”
“Linder!”
“I saw it all that night at dinner there. Some things are plain to everyone—except those most involved. Now it’s not my job to say to you what’s right and wrong, but the way it looks to me is this: what’s the use of setting up a new code of morality about money which concerns, after all, only some of us, if you’re going to knock down those things which concern all of us?”
Grant regarded his foreman for some time without answering. “I appreciate your frankness, Linder,” he said at length. “Your friendship, which I can never question, gives you that privilege. Man to man, I’m going to be equally frank with you. To begin with, I suppose you will admit that Y.D.‘s daughter is a strong character, a woman quite capable of directing her own affairs?”
“The stronger the engine the bigger the smash if there’s a wreck.”
“It’s not a case of wrecking; it’s a case of trying to save something out of the wreck. Convention, Linder, is a torture-monger; it binds men and women to the stake of propriety and bids them smile while it snuffs out all the soul that’s in them. We have pitted ourselves against convention in economic affairs; shall we not—”
“No! It was pure unselfishness which led you into the Big Idea. That isn’t what’s leading you now.”