Allegorically, Mrs Gould's request contitutes a desperate plea by altruism that the material interests spare the people's liberty. The railway's need to demolish Giorgio's "old building" symbolizes the material interests' need to "demolish" the people's liberty in order to triumph. Significantly, Mrs Gould denies the need, asserting that the inn is not "in the way of" the railroad. She is still holding fast to Charles' view that the material interests are a means to uplift the people, not a threat to them.

Even more significantly, she is wrong about the harbor branch line. As we have seen in Chapter 1-4 , the branch rails come within sixty yards of the building and are curved, suggesting that the material interests have made no little effort to honor their altruistic "promise." In other words, materialism benefits the people only because of its agreement with altruism. At the end of the book, when Charles and Emily have become alienated (read, the alienation of materialism and altruism), Viola's inn is gone, and sure enough we see the material interests suppressing the people's liberties and ambitions by force.