Neither spoke for a while. Later on, they talked about the coming election. If the Party got back, Phillips would go to the Board of Trade. It would afford him a better platform for the introduction of his land scheme. Joan rather resented his tone.!

“He must be somewhere,” she said: “the living God of love and hope: the God that Christ believed in.” She had risen while he was speaking. She moved to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders.

“You mean it?” said Flossie. “Of course you will go on seeing him—visiting them, and all that. But you won’t go gadding about, so that people can talk?” At a corner where the trams and buses stopped she lingered for a while, watching the fierce struggle; the weak and aged being pushed back time after time, hardly seeming to even resent it, regarding it as in the natural order of things. It was so absurd, apart from the injustice, the brutality of it! The poor, fighting among themselves! She felt as once when watching a crowd of birds to whom she had thrown a handful of crumbs in winter time. As if they had not enemies enough: cats, weasels, rats, hawks, owls, the hunger and the cold. And added to all, they must needs make the struggle yet harder for one another: pecking at each other’s eyes, joining with one another to attack the fallen. These tired men, these weary women, pale-faced lads and girls, why did they not organize among themselves some system that would do away with this daily warfare of each against all. If only they could be got to grasp the fact that they were one family, bound together by suffering. Then, and not till then, would they be able to make their power felt? That would have to come first: the Esprit de Corps of the Poor. Mrs. Phillips was in bed when Joan went up to say good-bye. “You’ll come again soon?” she asked, and Joan promised. “You’ve made me so happy,” she whispered. The nurse was in the room.