“It was righteousness, not rights of property that made you decide,” she assured him.  “Abel has no rights of property.  The law ignores his rights to be alive at all, I believe.  The law calls him ‘the son of none,’ and if you have no parents, you can’t really exist.  But the rights of labour are above human law and founded in humanity.  They are Abel’s, yours, everybody’s.  The man who works, by that fact commands the rights of labour.  Besides, circumstances alter cases.”

“Yes, and may again,” he replied.  “We can’t deny the difficulties in this personal experience of mine.  But I’m beginning to think the boy’s not normal.  I very much fear there’s a screw loose.”

“Don’t think that.  He’s a very clever boy.”

“And yet Sabina tells me frankly that his bitterness against me keeps pace with his growing intelligence.  Instead of his wits defeating his bad temper, as they do sooner or later with most sane people, the older he gets, the more his dislike increases and the less trouble he takes to control it.”

“If that were so, of course circumstances might alter the case again,” she admitted.  “But I don’t believe there’s a weak spot like that.  There’s something retarded—­some confusion of thought, some kind of knot in his mind that isn’t smoothed out yet.  You’ve been infinitely patient and we’ll go on being infinitely patient—­together.”

This difficult matter she dropped for the present; but finding him some days later in a recipient mood, followed up her cherished argument, that labour must be counted a commodity no more.

“Listen to me, Ray,” she said.  “Very soon you’ll be too busy to listen to me at all—­these are the last chances for me before your meetings begin.  But really what I’m saying will be splendidly useful in speeches.”

“All very well if getting in was all that mattered,” he told her.  “I can’t echo all your ideas, Chicky, and speeches have a way of rising up against one at awkward moments afterwards.”

“At any rate, you grant the main point,” she said, “and so you must grant what follows from it; and if you grant that, and put it in your manifesto, you’ll lose a few votes, but you’ll gain hundreds.  If labour’s not a commodity, but to be regulated by body and soul, then wages must be regulated by body and soul too.  Or, if you want to put it in a way for a crowd to understand, you can say that we give even a steam-engine the oil it must have before it begins to work, so how can we deny a man the oil he wants before he begins to work?”

“That means a minimum of wages.”

“Yes, a minimum consistent with human needs, below which wages cannot and must not fail.  That minimum should be just as much taken for granted as the air a man breathes, or the water he drinks, or the free education he gets as a boy.  It isn’t wages really; it’s recognition of a man’s right to live and share the privileges of life, and be self-respecting, just because he is a man.  Everybody who is born, Ray, ought to have the unquestioned right to live, and the amplest opportunity to become a good and useful citizen.  After that is granted, then wages should begin, and each man, or woman, should have full freedom and opportunity to earn what he, or she, was worth.  That does away with the absurd idea of equality, which can only be created artificially and would breed disaster if we did create it.”