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fear everywhere—so if you were a young idealist with a tender heart, how could you be happy?

Especially if your doctrines persuaded you that you had no right to the money you were

spending! If you persisted in keeping company with revolutionists and malcontents who were

only too ready to support your notions—and to draw the obvious conclusion that, since your

money didn't belong to you, it must belong to them! As a rule they asked you to give it for the

"cause," and many were sincere and would really spend it for the printing of literature or the

rental of meeting-places. That justified them in their own eyes and in yours, but hardly in the

eyes of the conservative-minded ladies and gentlemen whom your wife expected to invite to a

salon!

Some five years had passed since Lanny had begun helping workers' education in the Midi,

and that was time enough for a generation of students to have passed through his hands and give

him some idea of what he was accomplishing. Was he helping to train genuine leaders of the

working class? Or was he preparing some careerist who would sell out the movement for a

premiership? Sometimes Lanny was encouraged and sometimes depressed. That is the fate of

every teacher, but Lanny had no one of experience to tell him so.

Bright lads and girls revealed themselves in the various classes, and became the objects of his

affection and his hopes. He found that, being children of the Midi, they all wanted to learn to

be orators. Many acquired the tricks of eloquence before they had got any solid foundation,

and when you tried to restrain them and failed, you decided that you had spoiled a good

mechanic. Many Were swept off their feet by the Communists, who for some reason were the most

energetic, the most persistent among proletarian agitators; also they had a system of thought

wearing the aspect and using the language of science, and thus being impressive to young minds.

Lanny Budd, talking law and order, peaceable persuasion, gradual evolution, found himself

pigeon-holed as vieux jeu, or in American a "back number." "Naturally," said the young Reds,

"you feel that way because you have money. You can wait. But what have we got?"

This was true enough to trouble Lanny's mind continually. He watched his own influence

upon his proletarian friends and wondered, was he really doing them good? Or were the

preachers of class struggle right, and the social chasm too wide for any bridge-builder? What

community of feeling or taste could survive between the exquisite who lived in Bienvenu and

the roustabout's son who lived in the cellar of a tenement in the Old Town of Cannes? Was it

not possible that in coming to the school well dressed, and speaking the best French, Lanny was

setting up ideals and standards which were as apt to corrupt as to stimulate?

His friends at the school saw him driving his fancy car, they saw him with his proud young

wife; for though she came rarely, they knew her by sight and still more by reputation. And

what would that do to youths at the age of susceptibility? Would it teach them to be loyal to

some working-class girl, some humble, poorly dressed comrade in their movement? Or would it

fill them with dreams of rising to the heaven where the elegant rich ladies were kept? Lanny,

surveying his alluring spouse, knew that there was in all the world no stronger bait for the soul

and mind of a man. He had taken that bait more than once in his life; also he knew something

about the four Socialists who had become premiers of France, and knew that in every case it

had been the hand of some elegant siren which had drawn him out of the path of loyalty and into

that of betrayal.

VI

There stood unused on the Bienvenu estate a comfortable dwelling, the Lodge, which Lanny

had built for Nina and Rick. He begged them to come and occupy it this season; he had some

important ideas he wanted to discuss. But Rick said the pater had been hit too hard by the slump,

which seemed to have been aimed at landowners all over the world. Lanny replied with a

check to cover the cost of the tickets; it had been earned by the sale of one of Marcel's pictures,

and there were a hundred more in the storeroom. Also, Lanny explained, the vegetable garden at

Bienvenu had been enlarged, so as to give some of Leese's cousins a chance to earn their keep.

Come and help to eat the stuff!

Mother and father and the three children came; and after they had got settled, Lanny

revealed what he had in mind: to get some more money out of the picture business (perhaps

Irma would want to put some in) to found a weekly paper, with Rick as editor. They would try

to wake up the intellectuals and work for some kind of co-operative system in Europe before it

was too late. Lanny said he didn't know enough to edit a paper himself, but would be what in

America was called an "angel."

Rick said that was a large order, and did his friend realize what he was letting himself in for?

The commercial magazine field was pretty crowded, and a propaganda paper never paid

expenses, but cost like sin. Lanny said: "Well, I've spent my share on sin, and I might try

something else for a change."

"One can't publish a paper in a place like Cannes," declared Rick. "Where would you go?"

"I've wondered if it mightn't be possible to bring out a paper in London, and at the same time

in Paris in French?"

"You mean with the same contents?"

"Well, practically the same."

"I should say that might be done if the paper were general and abstract. If you expect to deal

with current events, you'd find the interests and tastes of the two peoples too far apart."

"The purpose would be to bring them together, Rick. If they read the same things, they

might learn to understand each other."

"Yes, but you're trying to force them to read what they don't want. The paper would seem

foreign to both sides; your enemies would call it that and make it appear still more so."

"I don't say it would be easy," replied the young idealist. "What makes it hard is exactly what

makes it important."

"I don't dispute the need," Rick said. "But it would cost a pile of money: A paper has to come

out regularly, and if you have a deficit, it goes on and on."

"Would you be interested in it as a job?" persisted the other.

"I'd have to think it over. I've come down here with a mind full of a play."

That was the real trouble, as it turned out. There was no use imagining that anybody could

edit a paper as a sideline; it was a full-time job for several men, and Rick would have to give up

his life's ambition, which was to become a dramatist. He had had just enough success to keep

him going. That, too, was an important task: to force modern social problems into the theater,

to break down the taboo which put the label of propaganda upon any effort to portray that class

struggle which was the basic fact of the modern world. Rick had tried it eight or ten times, and

said that if he had put an equal amount of energy and ability into portraying the sexual

entanglements of the idle rich, he could have joined that envied group and had plenty of

entanglements. But he was always thinking of some wonderful new idea which no audience

would be able to resist; he had one now, and so the Franco-British weekly would have to wait

until the potential editor had relieved his mind.

Lanny said: "If it's a good play, maybe Irma and I will back it." He always included his wife,

out of politeness, and the same motive would cause her to come along.