“That would be a pity,” said Ned.  He would have spoken differently had he not gone with Nellie last night, he thought while saying it.

“I think so.  It means the whole work to be done over again.  If Art and Science were based on the degradation of men I would say ’away with them.’  But they are not.  They elevate and ennoble men by bringing to them the fruition of elevated and noble minds.  They are expressions of high thought and deep feeling; thought and feeling which can only do good, if it is good to become more human.  The artist is simply one who has a little finer soul than others.  Mrs. Stratton was saying last night before you came that Nellie is an artist because she has a soul.  But it’s only comparative.  We’ve all got souls.”

“Mrs. Stratton is a splendid woman,” began Ned, after another pause.

“Very.  Her father was a splendid man, too.  He was a doctor, quite famed in his profession.  The misery and degradation he saw among the poor made him a passionate Communist.  Stratton’s father was a Chartist, one of those who maintained that it was a bread-and-butter movement.”

For some few minutes neither spoke.

“One of the most splendid men I ever knew,” remarked Geisner, suddenly, “was a workman who organised a sort of co-operative housekeeping club among a number of single fellows.  They took a good-sized ‘fiat’ and gradually extended it till they had the whole of the large house.  Then this good fellow organised others until there were, I think, some thirty of them scattered about the city.  They had cards which admitted any member of one house into any other of an evening, so that wherever a man was at night he could find friends and conversation and various games.  I used to talk to him a great deal, helping him keep the books of an evening when he came home from his work.  He had some great plans.  Those places were hotbeds of Socialism,” he added.

“What became of him?”

Geisner shrugged his shoulders without answering.

“Isn’t it a pity that we can’t co-operate right through in the same way?” said Ned.

“It’s the easiest way to bring Socialism about,” answered Geisner.  “Many have thought of it.  Some have tried.  But the great difficulty seems to be to get the right conditions.  Absolute isolation while the new conditions are being established; colonists who are rough and ready and accustomed to such work and at the same time are thoroughly saturated with Socialism; men accustomed to discuss and argue and at the same time drilled to abide, when necessary, by a majority decision; these are very hard to get.  Besides, the attempts have been on small scales, and though some have been fairly successful as far as they went, have not pointed the great lesson.  One great success would give men more Faith than a whole century of talking and preaching.  And it will come when men are ready for it, when the times are ripe.”

They were silent again.