“Take care they don’t get the best of you,” Miss Ensor advised him. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll sound him about giving up his lodgings.”!

“That’s like you women,” he answered with a smile. “You pretend to be superior; and then you copy us.” “She deserves the Croix de Guerre, if it is proved that she did it,” he thought. “She will have saved many thousands of lives—for the present.”

He was silent for a while, with a quiet look on his face. “They would never overtake the farmer,” he answered, with a laugh. “And the last word would always be with him. I am out to get rid of the landlords,” he continued, “not to establish them as the permanent rulers of the country, as they are in Germany. The people are more powerful—just a little, because they are no longer dependent on the land. They can say to the farmer, ‘All right, my son, if that’s your figure, I’m going to the shop next door—to South America, to Canada, to Russia.’ It isn’t a satisfactory solution. I want to see England happy and healthy before I bother about the Argentine. It drives our men into the slums when they might be living fine lives in God’s fresh air. In the case of war it might be disastrous. There, I agree with him. We must be able to shut our door without fear of having to open it ourselves to ask for bread. How would Protection accomplish that? Did he tell you?” Must man for ever be chained by his appetites to the unclean: ever be driven back, dragged down again into the dirt by his own instincts: ever be rendered useless for all finer purposes by the baseness of his own desires?