“You’ve not seen him since?” “Not since he bought his land.” “He’s a landowner,” she said, and fell into sadness. “He is indeed, on quite a big scale, and a very hardworking one.” “A farmer,” murmured Miriam, “that’s not so bad.” “It’s very arduous. He is always at his post. Never takes a holiday. For three winters I’ve tried to get him up here for a week.” “Absolute property in land,” she said to the sunlit snow, “is a crime.” Before her, side by side with a vision of Rent as a clutching monster astride upon civilisation, was a picture of herself, suddenly hitting out at these pleasant people, all, no doubt, landowners. It was only because the friend had been presented to her in the distance and with as it were all his land on his back that this one article of the Lycurgan faith of which she had no doubt, had at all reared itself in her mind. And as it came, dictating her words while she stood by counting the probable cost and wondering too over the great gulf between one’s most cherished opinions about life and one’s sense of life as it presents itself piecemeal embodied in people, she heard with relief his unchanged voice: “Oh, please tell me why?” And turned to see him flushed, smiling, pardoning her lapse, apologising for pardoning it, and altogether interested. “It’s a whole immense subject and I’m not a specialist. But the theory of Rent has been worked out by those who are, by people sincerely trying to discover where it is that temporarily useful parts of the machinery of civilisation have got out of gear and become harmful. _No_ one ought to have to pay for the right to sit down on the earth. _No_ one ought to be so helplessly expropriated that another can _buy_ him and use him up as he would never dream of using up more costly material—horses for instance.” “You are a socialist?” Into her answer came the sound of a child’s voice in plaintive recitative approaching from the hall. “Daphne in trouble,” he said, “you’ll tell me more, I _hope_,”—and turned his pleading smile to meet people coming in at the door. They clumped to the small table nearer the further window and she caught a sideways glimpse before they sat down: a slender woman with red-gold hair carrying a bunchy little girl whose long legs dangled against her skirt—Mrs. Sneyde, the grass-widow, and, making for the far side of the table a big buoyant girlish young woman—uninteresting—the sister-in-law, Maud Hollebone. The child’s “so bitter, _bitter_ cold,” sounded clear through the morning greetings in which she took no part. Her voice was strange, low and clear, and full of a meditative sincerity. Amidst the interchange of talk between Vereker and the two women it prevailed again: a plaintive monologue addressed to the universe.