She lit a cigarette and leaned her half-draped elbows on the tea-table, and curved her ringed fingers, which had withstood time and fatigue much better than her face; and then she reclined again on the chaise-longue, on her back, and sent up smoke perpendicularly, and through the smoke seemed to be trying to decipher the enigmas of the ceiling. G.J. rose and stood over her in silence. At last she went on:

"The work those girls do is excruciating, hellish, and they don't realise it. That's the worst of it. They'll never be the same again. They're ruining their health, and, what's more important, their looks. You can see them changing under your eyes. Ours was the best factory on the Clyde, and the conditions were unspeakable, in spite of canteens, and rest-rooms, and libraries, and sanitation, and all this damned 'welfare'. Fancy a girl chained up for twelve hours every day to a thundering, whizzing, iron machine that never gets tired. The machine's just as fresh at six o'clock at night as it was at six o'clock in the morning, and just as anxious to maim her if she doesn't look out for herself—more anxious. The whole thing's still going on; they're at it now, this very minute. You're interested in a factory, aren't you, G.J.?"

"Yes," he answered gently, but looked with seemingly callous firmness down at her.

"The Reveille Company, or some such name."

"Yes."

"Making tons of money, I hear."

"Yes."

"You're a profiteer, G.J."

"I'm not. Long since I decided I must give away all my extra profits."

"Ever go and look at your factory?"

"No."

"Any nice young girls working there?"

"I don't know."

"If there are, are they decently treated?"

"Don't know that, either."

"Why don't you go and see?"

"It's no business of mine."

"Yes, it is. Aren't you making yourself glorious as a philanthropist out of the thing?"

"I tell you it's no business of mine," he insisted evenly. "I couldn't do anything if I went. I've no status."

"Rotten system."

"Possibly. But systems can't be altered like that. Systems alter themselves, and they aren't in a hurry about it. This system isn't new, though it's new to you."

"You people in London don't know what work is."

"And what about your Clyde strikes?" G.J. retorted.

"Well, all that's settled now," said Concepcion rather uneasily, like a champion who foresees a fight but lacks confidence.

"Yes, but—" G.J. suddenly altered his tone to the persuasive: "You must know all about those strikes. What was the real cause? We don't understand them here."

"If you really want to know—nerves," she said earnestly and triumphantly.

"Nerves?"

"Overwork. No rest. No change. Everlasting punishment. The one incomprehensible thing to me is that the whole of Glasgow didn't go on strike and stay out for ever."

"There's just as much overwork in London as there is on the Clyde."

"There's a lot more talking—Parliament, Cabinet, Committees. You should hear what they say about it in Glasgow."