for worms, when it should have the finest fruits of the world.  And all this is for want of leadership.  Up you come you David Sands, you Phineas Crosses, you Nicholas Fenns, you Thomas Evanses.  You each think that you represent Labour, but you don’t.  You represent trade—­the workers at one trade.  How they laugh at you, the men who like to keep the government of this country in their own possession!  They stretch down a hand to the one who has climbed the highest, they pull him up into the Government, and after that Labour is well quit of him.  He has found his place with the gods.  Perhaps they will make him a `Sir’ and his wife a `Lady,’ but for him it is all over with the Cause.  And so another ten years is wasted, while another man grows up to take his place.”

“She’s right enough,” Furley confessed gloomily.  “There is something about the atmosphere of the inner life of politics which has proved fatal to every Labour man who has ever climbed.  Paul Fiske wrote the same thing only a few weeks ago.  He thought that it was the social atmosphere which we still preserve around our politics.  We no sooner catch a clever man, born of the people, than we dress him up like a mummy and put him down at dinner parties and garden parties, to do things he’s not accustomed to, and expect him to hold his own amongst people who are not his people.  There is something poisonous about it.”

“Aren’t you all rather assuming,” Stenson suggested drily, “that the Labour Party is the only party in politics worth considering?”

“If they knew their own strength,” Catherine declared, “they would be the predominant party.  Should you like to go to the polls to-day and fight for your seats against them?”

“Heaven forbid!” Mr. Stenson exclaimed.  “But then we’ve made up our mind to one thing—­no general election during the war.  Afterwards, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Unionists and Liberals and even Radicals didn’t amalgamate and make one party.”

“To fight Labour,” Furley said grimly.

“To keep England great,” Mr. Stenson replied.  “You must remember that so far as any scheme or program which the Labour Party has yet disclosed, in this country or any other, they are preeminently selfish.  England has mighty interests across the seas.  A parish-council form of government would very soon bring disaster.”

Julian glanced at the clock and rose to his feet.

“I don’t want to hurry any one,” he said, “but my father is rather a martinet about luncheon.”

They all rose.  Mr. Stenson turned to Julian.

“Will you go on with Miss Abbeway?” he begged.  “I will catch up with you on the marshes.  I want to have just a word with Furley.”

Julian and his companion crossed the country road and passed through the gate opposite on to the rude track which led down almost to the sea.

“You are very interested in English labour questions, Miss Abbeway,” he remarked, “considering that you are only half an Englishwoman.”