embrace the
other. Indeed Estelle contradicted him very forcibly.

"Not the least bit in the world," she declared. "They are as far apart
as the poles. There's nothing the least sacred about property. The
rights of property are casual. They generally depend on all sorts of
things that don't matter. They happen through the changes and chances of
life, and human whims and fads and the pure accident of heredity and
descent. They are all on a lower level; they are all suspect, whereas
the rights of labour are a part of humanity."

But he followed her parry with a sharp _riposte_.

"Remember what happened when somebody promised to marry me," he said.
"Remember that, as a principle of rectitude, I have recognised my son
and accepted your very 'accident of descent' as chief reason for
according him all a first-born's rights. That was your instinct towards
right--his rights of property."

"It was righteousness, not rights of property that made you decide," she
assured him. "Abel has no rights of property. The law ignores his rights
to be alive at all, I believe. The law calls him 'the son of none,' and
if you have no parents, you can't really exist. But the rights of labour
are above human law and founded in humanity. They are Abel's, yours,
everybody's. The man who works, by that fact commands the rights of
labour. Besides, circumstances alter cases."

"Yes, and may again," he replied. "We can't deny the difficulties in
this personal experience of mine. But I'm beginning to think the boy's
not normal. I very much fear there's a screw loose."

"Don't think that. He's a very clever boy."

"And yet Sabina tells me frankly that his bitterness against me keeps
pace with his growing intelligence. Instead of his wits defeating his
bad temper, as they do sooner or later with most sane people, the older
he gets, the more his dislike increases and the less trouble he takes
to control it."

"If that were so, of course circumstances might alter the case again,"
she admitted. "But I don't believe there's a weak spot like that.
There's something retarded--some confusion of thought, some kind of knot
in his mind that isn't smoothed out yet. You've been infinitely patient
and we'll go on being infinitely patient--together."

This difficult matter she dropped for the present; but finding him some
days later in a recipient mood, followed up her cherished argument, that
labour must be counted a commodity no more.

"Listen to me, Ray