“You don’t think there’s enough religion?” she murmured.

“There’s certainly plenty of churches and chapels.  But I find myself isolated here.  You see, I’m a Socialist.”

Eileen crossed herself instinctively.

“You don’t believe in God!” she cried in horror.  For the good nuns had taught her that “les socialistes” were synonymous with “les athees.”

He laughed.  “Not, if by God you mean Mammon.  I don’t believe in Property—­we up here in the sun and the others down there in the soot.”

“But you are up here,” said Eileen, naively.

“I can’t help it.  My mother would raise Cain.”  He smiled wistfully.  “She couldn’t bear to see a stranger helping father in the factory management.”

“Then you are down there.”

“Quite so.  I work as hard as any one even if my labour isn’t manual.  I dress like an ordinary hand, too, though my mother doesn’t know that, for I change at the office.”

“But what good does that do?”

“It satisfies my conscience.”

“And I suppose the men like it?”

“No, that’s the strange part.  They don’t.  And father only laughs.  But one must persist.  At Oxford I worked under Ruskin.”

“Oh, you’re an artist!”

“No, I didn’t mean that part of Ruskin’s work.  His gospel of labour—­we had a patch for digging.”

“What—­real spades!”

“Did you imagine we called a spoon a spade?” he said, a whit resentfully.

Eileen smiled.  “No, but I can’t imagine you using a common or garden spade.”

“You are thinking of my hands.”  He looked at them, not without complacency, Eileen thought, as she herself wondered where he had got his long white fingers from.  “But it is a couple of years ago,” he explained.  “It was hard work, I assure you.”

“Did your mother know?” Eileen asked with a little whimsical look.

“Of course not.  She would have been horrified.”

“Well, but most people would be surprised.”

“Yes.  Put your muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero; put your muscle into a spade and you are a madman.”

“You think it’s vice versa?” queried Eileen, ingenuously.

“Much more.  At least,” he stammered and coloured again, “I don’t pose as a hero but simply—­”

“As what?” Eileen still looked innocent.

“I simply think work is the noblest function of man,” he burst forth.  “Don’t you?”

“I do not,” answered Eileen.  “Work is a curse.  If the serpent had not tempted Eve to break God’s commandment, we should still be basking in Paradise.”

He looked at her curiously.  “You believe that?”

“Isn’t it in the Bible?” she answered, seriously astonished.

“Whatever the primitive Semitic allegorist may have thought, work is a blessing, not a curse.”

“Then you are an atheist!” Eileen recoiled from this strange young man.