h a life was to desire
ceaselessly to bring it within the reach of every human being. He could
not see how this was all to come about. He would have followed blindly
anybody who played the Marseillaise as Geisner did. He was ready to echo
any ringing thought that appealed to him as good and noble. But he did
not know. He could see that in the idea called by Mrs. Stratton "the
Cause" there was an understood meaning which fitted his aspirations and
his desires. He had gathered, his narrow bigotry washed from him, that
between each and all of those whom he had just left there was a bond of
union, a common thought, an accepted way. He had met them strangers, and
had left them warm friends. The cartoonist, white with rage at the memory
of the high rectory wall that shut the beautiful from the English poor;
the gloomy poet whose verses rang still in his ears and would live in his
heart for ever; the gray-eyed woman who idolised Art, as Nellie said, and
fanned still the fire in which her nearest kin had perished; the
pressman, with his dream of a free press that would not serve the money
power; the painter to whom the chiselled stone spoke; the pretty girl who
had been cradled amid barricades; the quiet musician for whom the
bitterness of death was past, born leader of men, commissioned by that
which stamped him what he was; the dressmaking girl, passionately
pleading the cause of Woman; even himself, drinking in this new life as
the ground sucks up the rain after a drought; between them all there was
a bond--"the Cause." What was this Cause? To break down all walls, to
overthrow all wrong, to destroy the ugliness of human life, to free
thought, to elevate Art, to purify Love, to lift mankind higher, to give
equality to women, to--to--he did not see exactly where he himself
came in--all this was the Cause. Yet he did not quite understand it,
just the same. Nor did he know how it was all to come about. But he
intended to find out. So he asked Nellie what the Strattons believed,
feeling instinctively that there must be belief in something.

"What do they believe?" he had asked.

"In Socialism," Nellie had answered.

"Socialism! Look here, Nellie! What is Socialism?" he had exclaimed.

They neared a lamp, shining mistily in the drizzle. Close at hand was a
seat, facing the grass. In the dim light was what looked like a bundle of
rags thrown over the seat and trailing to the ground. Nellie stopped. It
was a woman, sleeping.