“What do you mean?” he asked her, hostile. “Why do you hate democracy?”

“Only the greedy and ugly people come to the top in a democracy,” she said, “because they're the only people who will push themselves there. Only degenerate races are democratic.”

“What do you want then — an aristocracy?” he asked, secretly moved. He always felt that by rights he belonged to the ruling aristocracy. Yet to hear her speak for his class pained him with a curious, painful pleasure. He felt he was acquiescing in something illegal, taking to himself some wrong, reprehensible advantages.

“I do want an aristocracy,” she cried.

“And I'd far rather have an aristocracy of birth than of money. Who are the aristocrats now —