"I don't know what it's got to do with us over here."
"It hasn't anything to do with you or your affairs. But farmers are the most cautious class on earth. The minute there is a real storm cloud in Europe every one of 'em'll draw in his money and sit on it. The land game's entirely a matter of psychology. Let the papers begin yelling, 'War!' though it's eight thousand miles away, and every prospect I have will figure that good hard cash in hand is better than a mortgage with him on the wrong side of it. That means thumbs down for me. It's hard enough to keep up the office expenses and pay garage bills as it is."
Alarm was driven from his face by a chaos of emotions. He flushed darkly, his eyes on his plate. "You oughtn't to have to be worrying about such things."
"Oh, I won't mind if it does happen," she said quickly. "In a way, I'd be glad. I'd be out of business anyway; I'd find something else to do. Nobody knows how I hate business—nothing but an exploiting of stupid people by people just a little less stupid."
She caught at the impersonality of the subject, trying to control the intoxication that rose in her again, fed by his silence, by the currents it set vibrating between them once more. She threw her words into it as if their hard-matter-of-factness would break a growing spell.
"Six-tenths of our business can be wiped out without doing any harm. A real-estate salesman hasn't any real reason for existing. We're just a barrier between the land and the people who want it. We aren't needed a bit. The people would simply take the land if they weren't like horses, too stupid to know their own strength, letting us grow fat on their labor. Hoffman, owning the land and making a hundred per cent. on its sale; Clark & Hayward, with their fifty per cent. expenses and commissions; me, with my fifteen per cent, and the salesman under me—we're just a lot of parasites living off the land without giving anything in return. Oh, don't think I don't know how useless these last three years—"
She knew he was not listening. Nothing she was saying set his cup chattering against the saucer as he put it down. The twilight was prolonged by the first radiance of a rising moon, and in the strange, silver-gray light the white passion flowers, the green spray of the pepper-tree on the lawn, took on an unearthly quality, like beauty in a dream. Her voice wavered into silence. Through a haze she became aware that he was about to speak. Her own words forestalled him, still pleasantly commonplace.
"It's getting dark, isn't it? Let's go in and light the lamps."
His footsteps followed her through the ghostly dimness of the house. The floor seemed far beneath her feet, and through her quivering emotions shot a gleam of amusement. She was feeling like a girl in her teens! Her hand sought the electric light-switch as it might have clutched at a life-line.
"Helen, wait a minute!" She started, stopped, her arm out-stretched toward the wall "I've got to say something."