“Is it right to fan this flame?  Do you think any good end is being served?” Waiting for her answer, he found himself gazing at the ghost of dark down on her upper lip, wondering that he had never noticed it before.

Very low, as if to herself, she said: 

“I would kill myself to-day if I didn’t believe that tyranny and injustice must end.”

“In our time?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Are you content to go on working for an Utopia that you will never see?”

“While our laborers are treated and housed more like dogs than human beings, while the best life under the sun—­because life on the soil might be the best life—­is despised and starved, and made the plaything of people’s tongues, neither I nor mine are going to rest.”

The admiration she inspired in Felix at that moment was mingled with a kind of pity.  He said impressively: 

“Do you know the forces you are up against?  Have you looked into the unfathomable heart of this trouble?  Understood the tug of the towns, the call of money to money; grasped the destructive restlessness of modern life; the abysmal selfishness of people when you threaten their interests; the age-long apathy of those you want to help?  Have you grasped all these?”

“And more!”

Felix held out his hand.  “Then,” he said, “you are truly brave!”

She shook her head.

“It got bitten into me very young.  I was brought up in the Highlands among the crofters in their worst days.  In some ways the people here are not so badly off, but they’re still slaves.”

“Except that they can go to Canada if they want, and save old England.”

She flushed.  “I hate irony.”

Felix looked at her with ever-increasing interest; she certainly was of the kind that could be relied on to make trouble.

“Ah!” he murmured.  “Don’t forget that when we can no longer smile we can only swell and burst.  It is some consolation to reflect that by the time we’ve determined to do something really effectual for the ploughmen of England there’ll be no ploughmen left!”

“I cannot smile at that.”

And, studying her face, Felix thought, ’You’re right there!  You’ll get no help from humor.’ . . .

Early that afternoon, with Nedda between them, Felix and his nephew were speeding toward Transham.

The little town—­a hamlet when Edmund Moreton dropped the E from his name and put up the works which Stanley had so much enlarged—­had monopolized by now the hill on which it stood.  Living entirely on its ploughs, it yet had but little of the true look of a British factory town, having been for the most part built since ideas came into fashion.  With its red roofs and chimneys, it was only moderately ugly, and here and there an old white, timbered house still testified to the fact that it had once been country.  On this fine Sunday afternoon the population were in the streets, and presented all that long narrow-headedness, that twist and distortion of feature, that perfect absence of beauty in face, figure, and dress, which is the glory of the Briton who has been for three generations in a town.  ’And my great-grandfather’—­thought Felix—­’did all this!  God rest his soul!’