ecord in all the world of what man might do under
conditions of real liberty," said Estelle. "It has never been possible
so far; but I do believe history shows that the nearer we approach to
it, the more beautiful life becomes for everybody."

Raymond admitted so much and agreed that the world had yet to learn what
it might achieve under a nobler dispensation of freedom.

"Think of the art, the thought, the leisure for good things, if the
ceaseless fight against bad things were only ended; think of the
inspirations that personality will be free to express some day," she
said.

But he shattered her dreams sometimes. She would never suffer him to
declare any advance impossible; yet she had to listen, when he explained
that countless things she cried for were impracticable under existing
circumstances.

"You want to get to the goal without running the race, sweetheart," he
told her once. "Before this and this can possibly happen, that and that
must happen. House-building begins at the cellars, not the roof."

She wrestled with political economy and its bearings on all that was
meant by democracy. She was patient and strove to master detail and keep
within the domain of reality. But, after all, she taught him more than
he could teach her; because her thoughts sprung from an imagination
touched with genius, while he was contented to take things as he found
them and distrust emotion and intuition.

She exploded ideas in the ordered chambers of his mind. The proposition
that labour was not a commodity quite took him off his balance. Yet he
proved too logical to deny it when Estelle convinced his reason.

"That fact belongs to the root of all the future, I believe," she said.
"From it all the flowers and seed we hope for ought to come, and the
interpretation of everything vital. Labour and the labourer aren't two
different things; they're one and the same thing. His labour is part of
every man, and it can no more be measured and calculated away from him
than his body and soul can. But it is the body and soul that must
regulate labour, not labour the body and soul. So you've got to regard
labour and the rights of labour as part of the rights of man, and not a
thing to be bought and sold like a pound of tea. You see that? Labour,
in fact, is as sacred as humanity and its rights are sacred too."

"So are the rights of property," he answered, but doubtfully, for he
knew at heart that the one proposition did not by any means