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258 up and down the hall for a few minutes, and then went down to the street. He did not go back up-town, but he walked down through the wholesale district, picked his way among boxes and barrels, and examined crates of fruit and vegetables and poultry. When, after a half hour, he returned to the office of the League, he found Mrs. Bradley alone. She had expected that he would return, and was waiting for him. It was not an unusual thing for him to visit her there; scarcely a day had passed of late that he had not come in on one errand or another. He was imbibing socialism slowly, as his mental system was able to absorb the doctrine. So far as he understood it he was willing to subscribe to its principles. There was a basic element of justice underlying it all that quite appealed to him. It is true that the socialists of the city did not greatly pride themselves on their secretary's new convert, but this accession to their ranks gave deep satisfaction to Mrs. Bradley. Not that Barry's assistance or influence amounted to much, but that she knew the thing to be a thorn in the flesh of Richard Malleson. Lying in the background of her mind, living and throbbing, as it did on that disastrous day in court, was still her revengeful purpose to annoy, to humiliate, to bring to defeat and disaster, if possible, the man who was responsible for her having been sent empty-handed from the hall of justice. Lamar understood her motive and sympathized with her. He even suffered her, without marked protest, to receive Barry's open attentions. He knew that, in receiving them, the one thought in her mind was to harass the young man's aristocratic father with the prospect of having for a daughter-in-law that queen of the proletarians, Mary Bradley. There was many a quip passed back and forth between them concerning Barry's infatuation, and many an exchange of meaning glances, as together they instructed him in the elementary principles of socialism. And Barry, floundering beyond his depth in both