d bad
sights. Don't go on thinking I don't care. These people earn fortunes
beside those I have known, but in all London I've never seen anything
so horrible as this, nothing so hideous, sordid--" he stopped with a
gasp, "the women--the children--the lost desire--the ugliness."

They walked on silently. Presently he spoke again.

"You are a plucky man, Mr. Fulner. I couldn't face it."

"I've no choice. I don't know why I showed you it, except I thought
you were coming and I wanted your help."

"Are there many who care?"

"No. It's too precarious. Mr. Masters doesn't approve of fools. Mind
you, the men have no grievances inside the works. The unions have no
chance now. It's fair to remember that."

"Is it the same everywhere?"

"The System's the same. I know nothing about the other works but that.
There's the train: we must hurry."

"What do you want for your club?" Christopher asked as he entered his
carriage.

"A billiard table, gym fittings, books. We've a license. We sell beer
to members," his eyes were eager: the man's heart was in his hopeless
self-imposed work.

Christopher nodded. "I shall not forget."

So they parted: each wondering over the other--would have wondered
still more if they had known in what relationship they would stand to
each other when they next met.

CHAPTER XXI

Christopher stood for a moment inside the great hall at Stormly Park
and looked round. It was quite beautiful. Peter Masters, having chosen
the best man in England for his purpose, had had the sense to let him
alone. There was no discordant note anywhere and Christopher was quite
alive to its perfections. But coming straight from Stormly Town the
contrast was too glaring and too crude. It was not that Peter Masters
was rich and his people were poor. Poverty and riches have run hand in
hand down the generations of men, but here, the people were poor in
all things, in morals, in desire, in beauty, in all that lifted them
in the scale of humanity, in order that he, Peter Masters, should be
superfluously rich, outrageously so!

Christopher struggled hard to be just: he knew it was not the
superfluous money that was grudged, it was the more precious time and
thought saved with a greed that was worse than the hunger of a
miser--for no purpose but to add to over-filled stores. He knew all
Peter Masters' arguments in defence of his System already: That he
compelled no man to serve him, that none did so except on a cl