They sat silent for a while.

"Peter Simon Halket," said the stranger suddenly--Peter started; he had not
told him his second name--"if it should come to pass that you should obtain
those lands you have desired, and you should obtain black men to labour on
them and make to yourself great wealth; or should you create that company"-
-Peter started--"and fools should buy from you, so that you became the
richest man in the land; and if you should take to yourself wide lands, and
raise to yourself great palaces, so that princes and great men of earth
crept up to you and laid their hands against yours, so that you might slip
gold into them--what would it profit you?"

"Profit!" Peter Halket stared: "Why, it would profit everything. What
makes Beit and Rhodes and Barnato so great? If you've got eight
millions--"

"Peter Simon Halket, which of those souls you have seen on earth is to you
greatest?" said the stranger, "Which soul is to you fairest?"

"Ah," said Peter, "but we weren't talking of souls at all; we were talking
of money. Of course if it comes to souls, my mother's the best person I've
ever seen. But what does it help her? She's got to stand washing clothes
for those stuck-up nincompoops of fine ladies! Wait till I've got money!
It'll be somebody else then, who--"

"Peter Halket," said the stranger, "who is the greatest; he who serves or
he who is served?" Peter looked at the stranger: then it flashed on him
that he was mad.