and powers of criticism; rebellion leaped
out from the heat in her heart. But he said:

"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