Do you want to know ?" "Yes, tell me!" she whispered.

"I don't understand.

I can't! It--it all seems so horrible, so unreal, so--so different from what I've always believed about the majesty and purity of the law! Can these things be, indeed ?" He laughed bitterly.
"Can they ?" he repeated.

"When you see that they _are_, isn't that answer enough?
And the reason of it all is that I'm a Socialist and know certain secrets of certain men, which--if I should tell the world--might, nay, surely would precipitate a revolution.

So, these men, and the System behind them, have tried to discredit me by this foul charge.