“I—­I’ve been afraid to,” she said.

“Afraid?”

“Yes ...  Don’t you remember?  It might look as if ...”

He silenced her, knowing what was her thought.  “I’ll never think anything about you that isn’t so,” he said.

“Then I’ll suggest—­when I think of anything.  But I couldn’t have suggested any of it.  I couldn’t have dreamed it or hoped it.  Nothing I could have asked for them would have been as—­as splendid as this.”

“You believe in it?”

“More than that.  I’ve been into their homes.  They were glad to see me.  It was wonderful ...  Enough to eat, cleanliness, mothers at home with their babies instead of out washing, no boarders ...  And no worries.  That was best.  They showed me their bank accounts, or how they were buying homes, and how quickly they were paying for them ...  And I was proud when I thought it was my husband that did it.”

“Lightener says it looks all right now, but it won’t last.  He says it’s impractical.”

“He doesn’t know.  How could he know as well as you do?  Aren’t you the greatest man in the world?” She said it half laughingly, but in her heart she meant it.

She loved to talk business with him; to hear about the new mills and how they were turning out engines.  She discussed his project of enlarging further, perhaps of manufacturing automobiles himself, and urged him on.  “It will give work to more men, and bring more men under the plan,” she said.  That was her way of looking at it.

Hilda came often, and laughed at them, but she loved them.

“Just kids,” she jeered, but she envied them and told them so.  And then, because she deserved it, there came a man into her own life, and he loved her and she loved him.  Whereupon Bonbright and Ruth returned her jeers with interest.

More than a year went by, a year of perfection.  Then came a cloud on the horizon.  Even five dollars a day and the plan did not seem to content labor, and Bonbright became aware of it.  Dulac was active again, or, rather, he had always been active.  Discontent manifested itself. ...  It grew, and had to be repressed.  In spite of the plan—­ in spite of everything, a strike threatened, became imminent.

Ruth was thunderstruck, Bonbright bewildered.  His panacea was not a panacea, then.  He studied the plan to better it, and did make minor improvements, but in its elements it was just, fair.  Bonbright could not understand, but Malcolm Lightener understood and the professor of sociology understood.

“I can’t understand it,” Bonbright said to them.

“Huh!” grunted Lightener.  “It’s just this:  You’re capital, and they’re labor.  That’s it in a nutshell.”

“But it’s fair.”

“To be sure it’s fair—­as fair as a thing can be.  But the fact remains.  Capital and labor can’t get together as long as they remain capital and labor.”