"What is the matter?" his companion said to him at last, in her low,
insistent voice. "You are behaving so badly. Why won't you do anything one
wants you to?"

Sommers glanced at his companion as if she had shaken him out of a dream.
Her dark eyes were gleaming with irritation, and her mouth trembled.

"I had a vision," Sommers replied coolly.

"Well!" The man's egotism aroused her impatience, but she lowered her head
to catch every syllable of his reply.

"I seemed to see things in a flash--to feel an iron crust of prejudice."

The girl's brow contracted in a puzzled frown, but she waited. The young
doctor tried again to phrase the matter.

"These people--I mean your comfortable rich--seem to have taken a kind of
oath of self-preservation. To do what is expected of one, to succeed, you
must take the oath. You must defend their institutions, and all that," he
blundered on.

"I don't know what you mean," the girl replied coolly, haughtily, raising
her head and glancing over the table.

"I am not very clear. Perhaps I make a great deal of nothing. My remarks
sound 'young' even to me."


"I don't pretend to understand these questions. I wish men wouldn't talk