Tarsis lowered a window and the breath of springtime fanned their faces. It brought a delicious freshness from the little man-made streamlets that, catching the heavens’ mood, wove a blue network over the land, and sparkled in the sun-play like great strings of precious stones. In their purpose of irrigation they crossed the white highroads and the by-paths, coursed in sluices under the railway, and cut the fields how and where they pleased, too well bent upon practical service to care for symmetry of form. They drew near one another, they rambled far apart, but in the end always meeting in the wide canal that bore elsewhere their enriching flood; and so forever running, yet never wasted. A few weeks, and this pampered soil would render its marvellous account; the meadows would yield their many harvests; the rice stalks would be crowded with ears; the clover would be like a blossoming thicket, the cornfields like canebrakes; but the men and women who toiled to produce this abundance would live on in their poverty. The clod-breakers were there again to-day--as they had been with the returning springtime for ages, about their work--boys digging trenches, ploughmen at their shafts, women and girls planting seed. Hera noticed that the villages along the way had not the neat and cheerful look of the French and Swiss hamlets. Seen from afar, crowning a hilltop, their tiled roofs brightly red in the sun-glare, and the yellow walls gleaming like burnished gold, the pictorial expression of them was full of beauty; but when the train halted in the heart of one, and its wretchedness lay bare, her spirit was saddened by the grim reality. “I mean to do something to help the poor of Milan,” she said to Tarsis, one of the gloomy pictures haunting her memory. “You have chosen a wide field of good endeavour,” he returned, in a slight tone of banter. “And I wonder why the field is so wide,” she pursued. “Milan is called our City Prosperous.” “I think the reason is not difficult to find,” he said, with assurance. “Do you mean that the poor are unworthy?” “No; I should not give that as the first cause; it is a result. This sentimental nonsense called the New Democracy has turned working people’s heads. It gives them puffed-up notions of their value, and they will not work for the wages that the masters offer--the wages that it is possible for them to pay. They spend too much time talking about the dignity of labour. If only they would work for what they can get and not squander their wages in the wine-shops they would be well enough off. They want too much; more than they will ever get. Their warfare against capital only hurts themselves.” “Do they want more than they need?” she asked. “I am not familiar with their needs,” he answered, with a note of petulance. “I do know, however, that they often demand more than it is possible to pay. I am not a theorist. I happen to have gained my knowledge in the school of practice, as you may be aware.”