"I don't mean Ducie Street. Howards End, of course."
"Why 'of course'?"
"Can't you turn out your tenant and let it to us? We're nearly demented."
"Let me think. I wish I could help you. But I thought you wanted to be in town. One bit of advice: fix your district, then fix your price, and then don't budge. That's how I got both Ducie Street and Oniton. I said to myself, 'I mean to be exactly here,' and I was, and Oniton's a place in a thousand."
"But I do budge. Gentlemen seem to mesmerize houses—cow them with an eye, and up they come, trembling. Ladies can't. It's the houses that are mesmerizing me. I've no control over the saucy things. Houses are alive. No?"
"I'm out of my depth," he said, and added: "Didn't you talk rather like that to your office boy?"
"Did I?—I mean I did, more or less. I talk the same way to every one—or try to."
"Yes, I know. And how much do you suppose that he understood of it?"
"That's his lookout. I don't believe in suiting my conversation to my company. One can doubtless hit upon some medium of exchange that seems to do well enough, but it's no more like the real thing than money is like food. There's no nourishment in it. You pass it to the lower classes, and they pass it back to you, and this you call 'social intercourse' or 'mutual endeavour,' when it's mutual priggishness if it's anything. Our friends at Chelsea don't see this. They say one ought to be at all costs intelligible, and sacrifice—"
"Lower classes," interrupted Mr. Wilcox, as it were thrusting his hand into her speech. "Well, you do admit that there are rich and poor. That's something."
Margaret could not reply. Was he incredibly stupid, or did he understand her better than she understood herself?
"You do admit that, if wealth was divided up equally,
