through with it, then the fight would but rage the more fiercely round
the last two sections of the Bill.

The third section dealt with the hours of labour in the new workshops
that were to be. For the first time it became directly penal for a man,
as well as a woman, to work more than the accepted factory-day of ten and
a half hours, with a few exceptions and exemptions in the matter of
overtime. On this clause, if it were ever reached, the Socialist vote,
were it given solidly for the Government, might, no doubt, pull them
through. "But if we have any luck--damn it! they won't get the chance!"
Fontenoy would say, with that grim, sudden reddening which revealed from
moment to moment the feverish tension of the man.

In the last section of the Bill the Government, having made its
revolution, looked round for a class on which to lay the burden of
carrying it into action, and found it in the landlords. The landlords
were to be the policemen of the new Act. To every owner of every tenement
or other house in London the Bill said: _You_ are responsible. If, after
a certain date, you allow certain trades to be carried on within your
walls at all, even by the single man or the single woman working in their
own room, penalty and punishment shall follow.

Of this clause in the Bill Fontenoy could never speak with calmness. One
might see his heart thumping in his breast as he denounced it. At bottom
it was to him the last and vilest step in a long and slanderous campaign
against the class to which he belonged, against property,--against the
existing social order. He fell upon the subject to-night _a propos_ of a
Socialist letter in the morning papers; and George, who was mostly
conscious at the moment of a sick fatigue with Fontenoy and Fontenoy's
arguments, had to bear it as best he might. Presently he interrupted: