“The soil is oolite and clay, and the subsoil, which you see in the cliffs, is yellow sandstone—­the loveliest, goldenest soil in the world,” declared Estelle.

“The colour of a bath sponge,” he said, and she pretended despair.

“Oh dear!  And I really thought I had seen the dawning of poetry in you, Ray.”

“Merely reflected from yourself, Chicky.  Still I’m improving.  The turbine has a poetic side, don’t you think?”

“I suppose it has.  Science is poetic—­at any rate, the history of science is full of poetry—­if you know what poetry means.”

“I wish I had more time for such things,” he said.  “Perhaps I shall have some day.  To be in trade is rather deadening though.  There seems so little to show for all my activities—­only hundreds of thousands of miles of string.  In weak moments I sometimes ask myself if, after all, it is good enough.”

“They must be very weak moments, indeed,” said Estelle.  “Perhaps you’ll tell me how the world could get on without string?”

“I don’t know.  But you, with all your love of beautiful things, ought to understand me instead of jumping on me.  What is beauty?  No two people feel the same about it, surely?  You’d say a poem was beautiful; I’d say a square cut for four, just out of reach of cover point, was beautiful.  Your father would say, a book on shooting high pheasants was beautiful, if he agreed with it; John Best would say a good sample of shop twine was beautiful.”

“We should all be right, beauty is in all those things.  I can see that.  I can even see that shooting birds with great skill, as father does, is beautiful—­not the slaughter of the bird, which can’t be beautiful, but the way it’s done.  But those are small things.  With the workers you want to begin at the beginning and show them—­what Mister Best knows—­that the beauty of the thing they make depends on it being well and truly made.”

“They’re restless.”

“Yes; they’re reaching out for more happiness, like everybody else.”

“I wouldn’t back the next generation of capitalists to hold the fort against labour.”

“Perhaps the next generation won’t want to,” she said.  “Perhaps by that time we shall be educated up to the idea that rich people are quite as anti-social as poor people.  Then we shall do away with both poverty and riches.  To us, educated on the old values, it would come as a shock, but the generation that is born into such a world would accept it as a matter of course and not grumble.”

He laughed.

“Don’t believe it, Chicky.  Every generation has its own hawks and eagles as well as its sheep.  The strong will always want the fulness of the earth and always try to inspire the weak to help them get it.  With great leadership you must have equivalent rewards.”

“Why?  Cannot you imagine men big enough to work for humanity without reward?  Have there not been plenty of such men—­before Christ, as well as since?”