"How can we? There's not enough to go round," he told her. But she declared that no argument. "Then create conditions under which there might be much more. Let the workers be owners, too. If the owners only took their ownership in a different spirit and felt no man is more than a trustee for all--if they were like you, Ray, who are a worker and an owner both, what great things might happen! Make all industry co-operation, in reality as well as theory, and a real democracy must come out of it. It's bound to come." "Well, I suppose nothing can help it coming. We are great on free institutions in this country and they get freer every year." So they argued, much at one in heart, and an impartial listener had felt that it was within the power of the woman's intelligence and the man's energy and common sense, to help the world as far as individuals can, did chance and the outcome of their union afford them opportunity. But Estelle knew that good ideas were of little value in themselves. Seed is of no account if the earth on which it falls be poisoned, and a good idea above all, needs good will to welcome it. Good will to the inspirations of man is as sunshine, rain, sweet soil to the seed; without good will all thinking must perish, or at best lie dormant. She wondered how much of good seed had perished under the bad weather of human weakness, prejudice and jealousy. But she was young, and hope her rightful heritage. The blessed word 'reconstruction' seemed to her as musical as a ring of bells. "There are some things you never will be able to express in political terms, and life is one of them," Ernest Churchouse had assured her; but she was not convinced of it. She still reverenced politics and looked to it to play husbandman, triumph over party and presently shine out, like a universal sun, whose sole warmth was good will to man. And as she felt personally to Raymond's work, so did she want the world of women to feel to all men's work. She would not have them claim their rights in the argument of parity of intellect, for that she felt to be vain. It was by the virtue of disparity that their equality should appear. Their virtue and essential aid depended on the difference. The world wanted women, not to do what men had done, but to bring to the task the special qualities and distinctive genius of womanhood to complement and crown the labour of manhood. The mighty structure was growing; but it would never be finished without the saving grace of woman's thought and the touch of woman's hand. The world's work needed them--not for the qualities they shared with men, but for the qualities men lacked and they possessed. If Raymond represented the masculine worker, she hoped that she might presently stand in the ranks of the women, and doubted not that great women would arise to lead her.