He sat quite silent for a little time. He was inclined to struggle against the charm of her soft voice, the easy intimacy with which she treated him. In a sense he felt as though he were losing control of himself.

"I don't know," he said. "I think one ought to find one's work sufficient for a time. It is engrossing, isn't it? And that reminds me—I must go."

He rose almost abruptly to his feet. She was quick to appreciate his slight confusion of thought, his nervous self-impatience, and she smiled quietly. She was content to let him escape. She held out her hand, though, and his fingers seemed conscious of the firm, delicate warmth of her clasp.

"Come and talk to me again soon," she begged. "Come either as a politician or a friend, or however you like. It gives me so much pleasure to talk with you. Uncle will tell you that every one spoils me. Even Sir William comes and tells me about his troubles with the Irish Members. Will you come?"

He made a half promise. His departure was a little hasty—almost abrupt; he was conscious of a distinct turmoil of feeling. He hurried away, as though anxious to rid himself of the influence of the place. At the corner of the street he was about to hail a taxicab when a man gripped him by the arm. He turned quickly around. The face was somehow familiar to him—the grey, untidy beard, long hairy eyebrows, sunken eyes, the shabby clothes. It was David Ross.

"Can I speak a word with you, Mr. Maraton?"

Maraton nodded.

"Of course. I don't remember your name. You were at Manchester, weren't you, and at my house with the others?"

"Ross, my name is," the man answered. "I'd no call to be at Manchester, for I'm not one of the delegates. I'm not an M.P. but I've done a lot of speaking for them lately, and Peter Dale, he said if I paid my own expenses I could come along. I borrowed the money. I had to come. I had to hear you speak. I wanted to know your message."

"Were you satisfied with it?" Maraton enquired.

"I don't know," was the doubtful reply. "You ask me a question I can't answer myself. I thought so at the time, but since then I've spent many sleepless nights and many tired hours, asking myself that question. Now I am here to ask you one. Did you speak that night what you had in your mind when you left America?—what you thought of on the steamer coming over—what you meant to say when first you set foot in this country?"

Maraton was interested. He walked slowly along by the side of his companion.

"I did not," he admitted. "I came with other views.

"I knew it!" Ross exclaimed, almost fiercely. "I felt it, man. You came to preach redemption, even though the means were sharp and short and sudden, means of blood, means of death. Before you ever came here, I seemed to hear your voice crying across that great continent, crying even across the ocean. It was a terrible cry, but it seemed as though it must reach up into heaven and down into hell, for it was aflame with truth. It seemed to me that I could see the revolution upon us, the death that is like sleep, the looking down once more from some undiscovered place upon the new morning. You never uttered that cry over here."

Maraton glanced at his companion curiously.

"Mine was an immense responsibility," he said. "Granted that I had the power, do you think that I had the right to stir up a civil war here in the face of the help I was promised for our people?"

David Ross sighed.

"I don't know," he confessed. "I only know that many years ago, Peter Dale, when he was a young man, spoke as though the word of truth were burning in his heart. He was for a revolution. He would be content with nothing less. And Borden was like that, and Graveling, and others whom you don't know. And then the people gave them their mandate, knocked a bit of money together, and sent them to Parliament. There, somehow or other, they seemed to fall into the easier ways. They worked stolidly and honestly, no doubt, but something had gone, something we've all missed, something that by this time might have helped. When they told me—it was Aaron who came and told me—rode his bicycle like a madman, all the way from Soho. 'Maraton is come!' he shouted. Then it seemed to me that freedom was here; no more compromises, but battle—the naked sword, battle with the wrongs of generations to requite. Is the sword sheathed?"

Maraton passed his arm through his companion's.

"It is not sheathed," he declared, "nor while I have life will it be sheathed. If I have chosen the quieter methods, it is because for the present I have come to believe that they are the best. Six hundred thousand people in Lancashire are going to start life next Monday with an increase of between fifteen and twenty per cent to their weekly wage. Isn't that something to the good? And then, in a few weeks, every forge and furnace in Sheffield will be cold until the men's demands are granted there. And when that is over, we go for every industry, one by one, throughout the country. Before a year is past, I reckon that many millions will have passed from the pockets of the middle classes into the pockets of the labouring man. I am going to set that stream running faster and faster, and then I am going to begin all over again. With prosperity, the labouring classes will gain strength. You will have more time for thought, for education, for self-knowledge. And as they gain strength, once more we raise our hands. Do they seem slow to you, our methods, David Ross? Believe me, they did to me. Yet in my heart I know that I have chosen the right."

The man drew a little sigh. There may have been disappointment mingled with it, yet there was a certain amount of relief.

"I was afraid for you, Maraton," he said. "I thought of those others when they stumbled upon the easy ways, and I was afraid. With you it may be different. Hold on your way, then. It is not for me to criticise. But if you slacken, if your hand droops, then I shall come again."

He turned abruptly away and disappeared, walking with quick, shambling footsteps. Maraton looked after him thoughtfully for several moments, then he continued on his way homewards.



CHAPTER XXIII

The last words had been spoken, the suspense of a few hours was at an end. Maraton was on his way back to London, a duly accredited Member of Parliament for the eastern division of Nottingham. From his place in the railway carriage he fancied that he could hear even now the roar of voices, feel the thrill of emotion with which he had waited for the result. An Independent Member, even when backed as Maraton had been backed, is never in a wholly safe position. On the whole, he had done well. He had increased the majority of four hundred to a majority of seven hundred. And this, too, in the face of unexpected difficulties. At the last minute a surprise had been sprung upon the constituency. A Labour candidate had entered the field. Maraton's telegram to Peter Dale had produced no reply. The man, if not officially recognised, was at least not officially discouraged. His intervention had been useless, however. Maraton had carried the working men with him. In a sense it was an election on the strangest issues which had ever been fought. Many of the most far-seeing journalists of the day predicted in this new alliance the redistribution of Parties which for some time had been inevitable. So far as Maraton was concerned, it was, without doubt, an unexpected phase in his career. He was Maraton, M.P., representative of a manufacturing town; elected, indeed, as an Independent, but with a weighty backing of the Unionist Party behind him. The next time he spoke, probably, if he did speak before his journey to Sheffield, would be in the House of Commons. Would he, like those others, feel the inertia of it, the slow decay of his ambitions, the fatal tendency towards compromise?

Arrived at St. Pancras, Maraton drove straight to his house in Russell Square and, letting himself in with his latch-key, made his way to the study. The lights were still burning there. Julia and Aaron were sitting opposite to one another at the end of the long table, a typewriter between them and a pile of papers by Aaron's side. Julia rose at once to her feet.

"You are in!" she cried. "We have been telephoning all the evening. We heard half an hour ago."

Maraton nodded.

"In by seven hundred. Not bad, I suppose, considering that I must have been rather a hard nut to crack. Has Peter Dale been here?"

Aaron shook his head.

"He hasn't been near the place."

Maraton's face hardened.

"You know that they sprang a Labour candidate upon me at the last moment? He did me no particular harm, but it was an infamous trick. I wired to Dale yesterday and had no reply."

"David Ross has been here," Aaron said. "We heard all about it from him. There is dissension in the camp. Dale was in favour of withdrawing their candidate, but Graveling wouldn't have it."

"He did me no harm, anyway," Maraton remarked. "The Labour vote was mine from the start."

"So it ought to have been," Aaron declared vigorously. "What could they do but vote for you, with Manchester staring them in the face?"

Maraton's expression lightened, a gleam of humour twinkled in his eyes.

"After all," he murmured, "it would have been almost Gilbertian if I had been returned to Parliament with the Labour vote against me! . . . Aaron, go and ring up Peter Dale. I want this matter cleared up. Ask him when we can meet."

Aaron left the room upon his errand. Maraton moved restlessly about the room for a moment or two. He mixed himself a drink at the sideboard, and lit a cigarette. Julia's eyes followed him all the time.

"So you are a Member of Parliament," she said at last.

"I hope you approve?" he queried.

Julia did not answer him at once. He looked across at her from the depth of the easy chair into which he had thrown himself. She was wearing a plain black dress, buttoned to her throat and unrelieved even by a linen collar or any touch of white. She was pale, and her eyes seemed all the more beautiful for the faint violet lines beneath them.

"Parliament has been the grave of so many men's careers," Maraton continued. "I am fully warned. Nothing of the sort is going to happen to me. I wouldn't have gone in now but for Foley. It's only fair. It helps him, and he's sticking to his pledges like a man."

"When do you go to Sheffield?" she asked.

"Next Wednesday. No postponements."

Julia nodded.

"Mr. Elgood has been here this afternoon," she said, "from Sheffield. He is the secretary of the Union, you know. He is coming again to-morrow morning. He wants to talk to you about the boys' age limit."

"Any letters of consequence?"

Julia pointed a little disdainfully to a pile upon the table.

"All invitations," she observed coldly. "Perhaps you had better look them through."

Maraton shook his head.

"They are no use to me," he declared, "unless they're political?"

He rose and stood by Julia's side, glancing idly through the heap of papers by the side of her machine.

"You seem to have found plenty to do, anyway," he remarked.

"There was a great deal," she assured him. "I think I have collected all the possible information you can need on the steel works of Sheffield."

"Haven't been overworking, I hope?"

She laughed at him softly. Her parted lips seemed somehow to lighten her face.

"This doesn't quite compare with nine hours a day over a sewing machine, with a hundred other girls packed into a small room," she reminded him. "No, I haven't been overworking. I almost wished, an hour ago, that I could find something more to do."

"Why didn't you go out?"

"To-morrow night is Guild night," she said. "I go out then to talk to my girls. Miss Stevens is coming from the Lyceum Club to lecture to us on Woman's Suffrage."

"Do you want a vote?" he asked.

"If it comes,"' she replied. "It isn't worth worrying about. I like my girls, though, to be taught to think."

There was a brief silence. Maraton was still examining the letters laid out for his inspection. Julia was standing by his side. As the last one slipped through his fingers, he turned quickly towards her, oppressed by some mysterious significance in her silence. Her eyes were luminous. She seemed to be trembling. She avoided his enquiring glance.

"Julia!" he exclaimed.

She lifted her head slowly, almost unwillingly. Though her lips were parted, she made no attempt at speech. Then the door was suddenly opened. Aaron entered in some excitement.

"Mr. Dale and some of the others are here now, sir," he announced. "I heard they were on their way when I telephoned. They would like to see you at once."

Maraton stood for a moment quite still, without replying. Aaron gazed across the table in some surprise.

"What shall I say to them?" he asked. "They are here now."

Maraton shrugged his shoulders.

"Let them come in," he directed.



CHAPTER XXIV

The three men—Peter Dale, Abraham Weavel and Graveling filed into the room a little solemnly. Maraton shook hands with the two former, but Graveling, who kept his head turned away from Julia, affected not to notice Maraton's friendly overtures.

"So you managed it all right," Peter Dale remarked. "Pretty close fit, wasn't it?"

"Seven hundred," Maraton replied. "Not so bad, considering. You see, I was a complete stranger and I am not sure that I have learnt the knack yet of that sort of platform speaking."

"However that may be," Abraham Weavel declared, accepting a cigar from the box which Maraton had ordered, and standing with his hands underneath his coat-tails upon the hearthrug, "you've done the trick. You're an M.P., same as we are."

"You've no objection, I hope?" Maraton remarked lightly.

"That's as may be," Mr. Weavel observed sententiously. "We don't, so to speak, know exactly where we are just at this moment. There's all sorts of rumours going about, and we want them cleared up. Go on, Dale, ask him the first question. You're spokesman, you know."

Mr. Peter Dale threw away the match with which he had just lit his pipe, sampled the whiskey and water to which he had helped himself with a most liberal hand, and deliberately selected the most comfortable chair within reach. With his hands in his trousers pockets, the thumbs protruding, his pipe in the left-hand corner of his mouth, his eyebrows drawn close together, he looked steadfastly towards Maraton.

"The first question," he began stolidly, "is this. You owe your seat in Parliament to the Unionists. What have you promised them in return? You haven't attempted to commit us to anything, I hope?"

"Certainly not," Maraton replied. "Such an idea never occurred to me. So far as I know," he went on, after a moment's hesitation, "Mr. Foley is not, at the moment, in need of your support. His majority is sufficient."

Peter Dale frowned ominously.

"That may or may not be," he remarked gruffly. "So long as you haven't taken it upon yourself to pledge us to anything, well, that disposes of question number one. The next is, where are you going to sit in the House?"

Maraton's eyebrows were slightly raised.

"Where am I going to sit?" he repeated. "Remember, if you please, that as a member I have never been inside your House of Commons. I am not acquainted with its procedure. Where, in your opinion, ought I to sit?"

"Your place is with us," Peter Dale declared. "I can't see that there's any doubt about that."

"And why?"

"You're a Labour man, aren't you?" Peter Dale asked. "You call yourself one, anyway.

"If I am a Labour man," Maraton said, "why did you put up a candidate to oppose me at Nottingham?"

Peter Dale smoked steadily for several moments.

"It was nowt to do with me," he announced. "The fellow sprung up all on his own, as it were. Graveling here may have known something of it, but so far as we are concerned he was not an authorised candidate."

Maraton shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"There was nothing," he objected, "to convey that idea to the electors. He made use of the Labour agent and the Labour committee rooms. My telegram to you remained unanswered. Under those circumstances, I really can scarcely see how you find it possible to disown him."

"In any case," Abraham Weavel intervened, with conciliation in his tone, "he didn't do himself a bit a' good nor you a bit of harm. Four hundred and thirty votes he polled out of eight thousand, and those were votes which otherwise would have gone to the Liberal. I should say myself that it did you good, if anything."

"You may be right," Maraton admitted. "At the same time, one thing is very clear. You did not offer me the slightest official support. It is true that I did not ask for it. I prefer, as I have told you all along, my independence. It will be my object to continue without direct association with any party. If I can find a place in the house allotted to Independent Members, I shall sit there. If not, I shall sit with the Unionists."

Peter Dale's face darkened. This was what they had feared.

"You mean that you're breaking away from us?" he exclaimed angrily. "There's no room in our little party for Independent Members, no sort of sense in a mere handful of us all pulling different ways."

"I never joined your party, Mr. Dale," Maraton reminded him. "I have never joined any man's party. I am for the people."

"And what about us?" Graveling demanded. "Aren't we for the people? Isn't that what we're in Parliament for? Isn't that why we are called Labour Members?"

Maraton regarded the last speaker steadily.

"Mr. Graveling," he said, "since you have mooted the question, I will admit that I do not consider you, as a body of men, entirely devoted to the cause of the people. You are each devoted to your own constituency. It is your business to look after the few thousand voters who sent you into Parliament, and in your eagerness to serve and please them, I think that you sometimes forget the greater, the more universal truths. I may be wrong. That is how the matter seems to me."

"Then since you're so frank," Peter Dale declared, with undiminished wrath, "I'll just imitate your candour! I'll tell you how you seem to us. You seem like a man with a gift, whose head has been turned by Mr. Foley and his fine friends. You're full of great phrases, but there's nothing practical about them or you. You're on your way to an easy place for yourself in the world, and a seat in Foley's Cabinet."

"Have you any objection," Maraton asked, "to the people's cause being represented in the Cabinet?"

It was the last straw, this! Peter Dale's voice shook with passion.

"It's been a promise," he shouted, "for this many a year! A sop to the people it was, at the last election. There's one of us ought to be in the Cabinet—one of us, I say, not a carpetbagger!"

"We're the wrong type of man," Graveling broke in sarcastically. "That's what he said. He was heard to say it to the Home Secretary. The wrong type of man he called us."

Maraton suddenly changed his attitude. He was momentarily conscious of Julia listening, from her place in the background, to every word with strained attention. After all, these men had doubtless done good work according to their capacity.

"My friends," he protested, "why do we bandy words like this? Perhaps it is my fault. I have had a long and tiring day, and I must confess that I to some extent resented a Labour man being set up against me, without a word of explanation. You mean well, all of you, I am sure, even if we can't quite see the same way. Don't let's quarrel. I am not used to Parties. I can't serve under any one. My vote's my own, and I don't like the political juggery of selling it here and there for a quid pro quo. We may sit on opposite benches, but I give you my word that there isn't anything in the world which brings me into political life or will keep me there, save the welfare of the people. Now shake hands, all of you. Let us have a drink together and part friends."

Peter Dale shook his head doggedly. He had risen to his feet—a man filled with slow burning but bitter anger.

"No, sir!" he declared. "Me and my mates have stood for the people for this many a year, and we've no fancy for a fine gentleman springing up like a Jack-in-the-box from somewhere else in the House, without any reference to us, and yet calling himself and advertising himself as the champion of our cause. Outside Parliament we can't stop you. The Trades' Union men think more of you, maybe, than they do of us. But inside you can plough your own furrow, and for my part, when you're on your legs, the smoking-room will be plenty good enough for me!"

"And for the rest of us!" Graveling agreed fiercely. "If you're so keen on being independent, you shall see what you can do on your own."

Dale was already on his way to the door, but Maraton checked him.

"Mr. Dale," he said, "you are an older man than I am, a man of much experience. I beg you to reflect. The feelings which prompt you towards this action are unworthy. If you attempt to send me to Coventry, you will simply bring ridicule upon a Party which should be the broadest-minded in the House."

Mr. Dale turned around. He had already crammed his black, wide-awake hat on to his head. Like all men whose outlook upon life is limited, the idea of ridicule was hateful to him.

"You mark my words, young man," he growled. "The one that makes a fool of himself is the one that's going to play the toady to a master who will send him to heel with a kick, every time he opens his mouth to bark! Go your own way. I'm only sorry you ever set foot in this country."

He passed out, followed by Weavel. Graveling only lingered upon the threshold. He was looking towards Julia.

"Miss Thurnbrein," he said, "can I have a word with you?"

"You cannot," she replied steadily.

He remained there, dogged, full of suppressed wrath. The sight of her taking her place before the typewriter seemed to madden him. Already she was the better for the change of work and surroundings, for the improved conditions of her daily life. There was the promise of colour in her cheeks. Her plain black gown was as simple as ever, but her hair was arranged with care, and she carried herself with a new distinction, born of her immense contentment. Her supercilious attitude attracted while it infuriated him.

"It's only a word I want," he persisted. "I have a right to some sort of civility, at any rate."

"You have no rights at all," she retorted. "I thought that we had finished with that the last time we spoke together."

"I want to know," he went on obstinately, "why you haven't been to work lately?"

"Because I have left Weinberg's," she told him curtly. "It is no business of yours, but if it will help to get rid of you—"

"Left Weinberg's," he repeated. "Got another job, eh?"

"I am Mr. Maraton's assistant secretary," she announced.

His face for a moment was almost distorted with anger.

"You're living here—under this roof?" he demanded.

"It is no concern of yours where or how I am living," she answered.

"That's a lie!" Graveling exclaimed furiously. "You're my girl. I've hung around after you for six years. I've known you since you were a child. I'll be d—d if I'll be thrown on one side now and see you become another man's mistress—especially his!"

He came a step further into the room. Maraton, who had been standing with his back to them, arranging some papers on his desk, turned slowly around. Graveling was advancing towards him with the air of a bully.

"Do you hear—you—Maraton?" he cried. "I've had enough of you! You can flout us all at our work, if you like, but you go a bit too far when you think to make a plaything of my girl. Do you hear that?"

"Perfectly," Maraton replied.

"And what have you got to say about it?"

Maraton shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"I don't know that I have anything particular to say about it. If it interests you to be told my opinion of you, you are welcome to hear it."

Graveling advanced a step nearer still. His fists were clenched, an ugly scowl had parted his lips. Julia came swiftly from her seat. Her eyes were filled with fury. She faced Graveling.

"Richard Graveling," she exclaimed, "I am ashamed to think that I ever let you call yourself my friend! If you do not leave the room and the house at once, I swear that I will never speak to you again as long as I live!"

He pushed her aside roughly.

"I'll talk to you presently," he declared. "It's him that my business is with now."

Maraton's eyes flashed a little dangerously.

"Keep your hands off that young lady," he ordered.

"You'd like her to protect you, would you?" Graveling taunted. "Listen here. I'm not the sort of man to have my girl taken away and made another man's plaything. Is she going to stop here? Answer me quickly."

"As long as she chooses," Maraton replied.

"Then take that!" Graveling shouted.

Maraton stepped lightly to one side. Graveling was overbalanced by his fierce blow into the empty air. The next moment he was lying on his back, and the room seemed to be spinning around him. Maraton was standing with his finger upon the bell. Julia was by his side, her eyes blazing. She spoke never a word, but as Graveling struggled back to his senses he could see the scorn upon her face.

Aaron and a man servant entered the room simultaneously. Maraton pointed to the figure upon the floor.

"Aaron," he said, "your friend Mr. Graveling has met with a slight accident. You had better take him outside and put him in a taxicab."

Graveling rose painfully to his feet. He was very pale, and there was blood upon his cheek. He leaned on Aaron's arm and he looked towards Maraton and Julia.

"Better apologise and shake hands," Maraton advised quietly.

Graveling seemed not to have heard him. He looked towards them both, and his fingers gripped Aaron's shoulder so that the young man winced with pain. Then without a single word he turned towards the door.

"Let him go!" Julia cried fiercely. "I am only thankful that you punished him. We do not want his apologies. I hope that I may never see him again!"

Graveling, who had reached the door, leaning heavily upon Aaron, turned around. His face, with the streak of blood upon his cheek, was ghastly. He left the room between Aaron and the servant. They heard his unsteady footsteps in the hall, a whistle, the departure of the cab. "Aaron has gone with him," Maraton remarked quietly. "Perhaps it is as well."

Her face suddenly relaxed and softened. The fury left her eyes; she sank back into the easy chair.

"I am ashamed," she moaned. "Oh, I am ashamed!"



CHAPTER XXV

The sound of traffic outside had died away. The silence became almost unnaturally prolonged. Only the echo of Julia's last words seemed, somehow or other, to remain, words which inspired Maraton with a curious and indefinable emotion, a pity which he could not altogether analyse. Twice he had turned softly as though to leave the room, and twice he had returned. He stood now upon the hearthrug, looking down at her, perplexed, himself in some degree agitated. She was not weeping, although every now and then her bosom rose and fell as though with some suppressed storm. It was simply a paroxysm of sensitiveness. She was afraid to look up, afraid to break a silence which to her was full of consolation. Maraton, a little ashamed of the scene in which he had been an unwilling participator, bitterly self-accusing, still found his thoughts diverted from his own humiliation as he watched the girl—a long, slim figure bent in one strangely graceful curve, her beautiful hair gleaming in the soft light, her face still half hidden by her strong, capable fingers—a figure exquisitely symbolic, full of pathos. Her elbows rested upon her knees; she was crouched a little forward. "Julia!" he ventured at last.

She looked up, without undue haste but without hesitation. She had obviously been waiting for speech from him. He saw then that his impression had been a true one. There were no traces of tears in her eyes, which sought his at once—sought his with a look which warned him suddenly of his danger. Her cheeks were burning; she was still shaking with some internal passion.

"After all," he said soothingly, "there are such people in the world. One can't ignore the fact of their existence. They don't really count."

Her eyes flashed.

"It is terrible that they should be allowed to live."

He smiled at her sympathetically. Speech seemed somehow to lessen the tension between them.

"My dear Julia," he declared, "I am suffering just as much as you. I have the feeling that I have descended to the level of a common brawler. Yet what was I to do? he needed the lesson very badly indeed."

"I only hope that it will last him all his life. I only hope that he will not come near either of us again."

"Very doubtful whether he will want to, I should think," Maraton remarked, leaning against the table. "You certainly didn't mince your words."

"If I could have thought of harsher ones, I would have used them," she asserted.

"What a waste of time it has been this evening!" He sighed, as his fingers turned over the pile of letters by his side. "What with Mr. Peter Dale and his little deputation, and this idiotic person Graveling, I have scarcely done a thing since I got home."

"There's nothing that you need do until to-morrow," she told him softly.

There was another brief pause. She was sitting up now—leaning back in her chair, indeed—trembling no longer, although the colour still flamed in her cheeks. Her eyes, which seldom left his face, were strangely, almost liquidly soft. Maraton moved restlessly in his place. Perhaps he had been unwise not to have stolen out of the room during the first few moments. Julia, as he very well knew, was no ordinary person, and he felt a sense of growing uneasiness. The tension of silence became ominous and he spoke simply to dissipate it.

"I hope I really didn't hurt the fellow."

"If you had killed him," she replied, "he deserved it!"

"He was an insulting beast, of course," Maraton continued. "After all, though, one mustn't bring oneself down to the level of these creatures. He saw with his eyes, and what is seen from that point of view isn't of any account. Perhaps it isn't his fault that he hasn't learnt to govern himself. If I were you, Julia, I wouldn't bother about it any more, really."

"It wasn't altogether what he said," she whispered. "It wasn't altogether that."

He looked at her enquiringly.

"You mean?"

She shook her head.

"Tell me?" he begged.

Once more he saw that little quiver pass through her frame. Her lips were parted and closed again. Maraton was puzzled, but did his best to follow her line of thought.

"The only way to treat such a person," he continued, "is to treat him as a lunatic. That is what he really is. I scarcely heard what he said; already I have forgotten every word."

"But I can't! I never can!"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"My dear Julia," he protested, "I appeal to your common sense!"

She looked at him almost angrily. Her foot beat upon the floor.

"What has common sense to do with it!" she exclaimed. "Of course, it was a foolish thing to say. He didn't even believe it—I am sure of that. It was simply mad, insensate jealousy; a vicious attempt to make me suffer. That isn't where he hurt. It was because—shall I tell you?"

A sudden instinct warned him. He held out his hand.

"It will only distress you. No, I don't want to hear."

The momentary silence seemed endowed with peculiar qualities. They heard the little clock ticking upon the mantelpiece, the tinkle of a hansom bell outside, the muffled sound of motor horns in the distance. Very slowly her head drooped back once more to the shelter of her hands.

"You don't understand," she said simply. "Why should you? I wasn't even angry—that is the terrible part of it. I wished—I found myself wishing—that it were true!"

Maraton's hands suddenly gripped the edge of the table against which he was leaning. Her face was still concealed; once more her long, slim body was shaken with quivering sobs.

"The shame of it!" she moaned. "That is where he hurt. The shame of hearing it and knowing it wasn't true and of wanting it to be true! I haven't ever thought of any one like that—he knows that well enough. He used to call me sexless. There isn't any man in the world has ever dared to touch my lips—he knows it."

Maraton left his place and quietly approached her. She heard him coming, and the trembling gradually ceased. He sat on the arm of her chair, and his hand rested gently upon her shoulder.

"Dear Julia," he said, "I am glad that you have been honest. Life is always full of these emotions, you know, especially for highly-strung people, and sometimes the atmosphere gets a little overcharged and they blaze out as they have done this evening, and perhaps one is the better for it."

She remained quite motionless during his brief pause. One hand had moved from before her face and had gripped his.

"There's our work, you know, Julia," he went on. "There isn't anything in the world must interfere with that. We can't divide our lives, can we? We ought not to want to. If I could make you understand—can I, I wonder?—how splendid it is to have some one here by my side who understands. It seems to me that I am going to be a little lonely. I shall have to stand on my own feet a good deal. I rely so much upon you, Julia. You are a woman, aren't you—I mean a real woman? I need you."

Very slowly she raised her head. Her eyes met his freely. There was something of the childlike adoration of an instinctive and triumphant purity in the smile which parted her lips. Maraton understood at once that the danger was past. The thunder had left the air.

"You know that I am your slave," she murmured. "Don't be afraid that I am becoming neurotic. You see, this was all a little new to me, and for a moment I felt that I wanted to go and hide myself. That has all passed now. I am not even ashamed. I suppose one gets terrified with receiving so much, and wants to give. It's a very natural feminine impulse, isn't it? And I shall give—my fingers, my brain—all I possess."

She rose suddenly to her feet and glanced at the clock.

"What a day you must have had!" she exclaimed. "You are not going to look at my Sheffield figures, even, before the morning. Oh, you'll be surprised when you see them! You've a wonderful case. Some of the fortunes that have been made there—that are being made there now—are barbaric. I mustn't talk about it, or I shall get angry. Listen, there's Aaron."

They heard the sound of his latch-key. A moment later he entered the room. He looked anxiously at Maraton; Julia he scarcely noticed.

"I took him home," he announced. "He never spoke a word the whole way; seemed stupid. I shouldn't be surprised if he hadn't got a little concussion.

"Did you send for a doctor?" Maraton asked.

"His landlady was going to do that," Aaron continued. "It was all I could do to sit in the cab by his side. I wish—yes, I almost wish that he'd never got up from that carpet."

"Thanks," Maraton replied. "I didn't come over here to fill the inside of an English prison!"

"Prison!"

Aaron's expression of contempt was sublime.

"There's nothing they could have done to you, sir. All the same, I only wish that your blow had killed him."

"Why?"

Aaron dropped his voice for a minute.

"Because wherever we go or move," he said, "there will always be the snake in the grass. He will be filled forever with a poisonous hatred for you. He will never dare to raise his hand against you to your face—he isn't that sort of man—but he'll have his stab before he's finished. He was born a sneak."

Maraton smiled carelessly as he bade them good night.

"The one thing in the world," he reminded them, "worse than having no friends, is to have no enemies."



CHAPTER XXVI

Eight days later, Maraton delivered his preliminary address to the ironworkers of Sheffield, and at six o'clock the next morning the strike had been unanimously proclaimed. The columns of the daily newspapers, still hopelessly bound over to the interests of the capitalist, were full of solemn warnings against this new and disturbing force in English sociology. The Daily Oracle alone paused to present a few words of appreciation of the splendid dramatic force wielded by this revolutionary.

"If this man is sincere," the Oracle declared, "the country needs him. If he is a charlatan, then for heaven's sake, even at the expense of all the laws that were ever framed, away with him! There is no man breathing to-day who is developing a more potent, a more wide-reaching influence upon the destinies of our country."

Maraton's first address had been delivered to a great multitude, but there was no building whose roof could cover the hordes of men who had made up their minds to hear his last words at Sheffield. From far and wide, the people came that night in countless streams. A platform had been arranged in the middle of the principal pleasure park of the town, and around this, from early in the afternoon, they began to take up their places. When night fell, so far as the eye could see, the ground was covered with a black mass of humanity. The multitude filled the park and crowded up the encircling streets. As the darkness deepened, they lit torches. Beyond, down in the valley and up on the hillside, were rows of lights and the flare of furnaces soon to be quenched. Even that little group of hard, unimaginative men who stood with Maraton upon the platform felt the strange thrill of the tense and swelling throng gathered together with this inspiring background.

It seemed to Maraton himself, as he stood there listening to the roar of welcoming voices, as though all their white faces were gathered into one, the prototype of suffering humanity, the sad, hollow-checked, hollow-eyed victim of birth and heritage. His voice seemed to swell that night to something greater than its usual volume; some peculiar gift of penetration seemed to have been accorded him. A hundred thousand men heard his passionate prayer to them. They were hard-featured, hard-minded Yorkshiremen, most of them, but they never forgot.

"You will get the half a crown a week which your leaders demand," Maraton told them. "Your masters—may God forgive me for using the word!—will pay to that extent. But—if there is any justice beyond this world, how, indeed, will they meet the debt built upon your sufferings, your cramped lives, and the graves of your little children. That half a crown a week, I say, will come to you. Don't dare, any of you, to be satisfied when it does come. It isn't a few shillings only that are owing to you. It's another social system, a rearrangement of your whole scheme of life, under which you and your children, and your children's children, may live with the dignity and freedom due to that strange and common gift of life which beats in your pulses and in mine. I am here to-night to show you the way to that extra half-crown, but I don't want you for one moment to think that these small increases in wages represent the end and aim of myself and those who share my beliefs. Your day may not see it, nor mine, but history for the last thousand years has shown us the slow emancipation of the peoples of the world. There are many rungs in the ladder yet to be climbed. Your children may have to take up the burden where you have left it. A revolution may be necessary, sorrows innumerable may lie between you and the goal of your class. And yet I bid you hope. I plead with each one of you to remember that he is not only an individual; that he is a unit of humanity, that he is the progenitor of unborn children, a force from which will spring the happier and the freer generation, if not in our time, in the days to come."

He passed on to speak for a few moments about the reconstituted state of Society, which was his favourite theme, and from that to a peroration unprepared—fiercely, passionately eloquent. When he had finished speaking, the air seemed curiously dull and lifeless; an extraordinary silence, like the silence before a thunderstorm, brooded over the place. Then the human sea broke its bounds. The smut-blackened trees quivered with the thunder of their voices. Showers of sparks rose into the air from the torches they waved. It was a pandemonium of sound. They came on like a mighty flood, before whose force the dam has suddenly yielded. The platform was crushed like a nutshell before their onslaught. They were mad with a great enthusiasm, beside themselves with a passion stirred only in such men once or twice in a lifetime. The roar of their voices, as they shouted his name, reached even to the station, to which Maraton had been smuggled secretly in a fast motor-car—a disappearance which a great journalist on the next morning alluded to as the one supremely dramatic touch in a night of wonders. The roar of voices indeed was still in his ears as he stood before the window of his compartment, looking out over the fire-hung city with its vaporous flames, its huge furnaces, its glare which was already becoming fainter. A myriad lights still twinkled upon the hillsides; the smoke-stained sky was red with the reflection of those thousand torches. Even as the train rushed on into the darkness, he could hear the echo of their cry as they sought for him.

"Maraton! Maraton!"

He threw himself at last into a corner seat of his compartment, and conscious of a somewhat rare physical exhaustion, he rang the bell for the attendant and ordered refreshments. The evening papers were by his side, but he had no fancy to read. The thrill of the last few hours was still upon him. He sat with folded arms, looking idly through the window at the chaotic prospect. Suddenly he was aware that the door of his compartment had been opened. A man had entered and was taking the seat opposite to him, a man whose appearance struck Maraton at once as being vaguely familiar, a man who smiled at him almost with the air of an old acquaintance.

"You don't recognise me, I can see," the newcomer said, smiling slightly, "yet we ought to know one another."

Maraton looked at the intruder curiously. It was, in many respects, a remarkable face; a low, heavy forehead; eyes in which shone the unmistakable light; broad, firm mouth; fair hair, left unusually long. In figure the man was short and stout. His collar had parted, and a black bow of unusual size was drooping from his shoulder. He was slightly out of breath, too, as though he had but recently recovered from some strenuous exercise.

"I will save you from speculations—I am Henry Selingman," he pronounced.

Maraton held out his hand.

"Selingman!" he exclaimed. "It is your photographs, of course, then. We have never met."

"Never until to-night," Selingman admitted. "When I heard that you were in England, I made up my mind to come over. To-night seemed to me propitious. I wanted to understand this marvellous power of yours of which so many people have written. Nothing has been exaggerated. The message which I have struggled to deliver to the world through my poetry, my plays, such prose as I have ventured upon, you yourself can tear from your heart and throw to the people's own ears. . . . Forgive me—I, too, will smoke. I will drink wine, also," he added, ringing the bell. "I had a dozen friends to help me, but every bone in my body aches with the struggle to escape. You maddened them, those people. It was magnificent."

He ordered champagne from the attendant and began to smoke a long black cigar, nervously and quickly.

"To-night I shall write of this," he went on. "I have lived for forty-five years and I have hunted all over the world, and in my study I have conjured up all the visions a man may, but never yet has there been anything like this. The black hillside a mass of soft black velvet, jewelled like a woman's gown, the red fires from the blasting furnaces, the shower of sparks from a thousand torches, the glow upon the fog poisoned sky, those faces—God, how white! Never in my life have I seen the writing of the finger of the Messiah as I saw it to-night! It has been the hour of a lifetime. Maraton, over there, man, our toilers are toilers indeed, but not like that. It isn't stamped into them. No, they're not branded."

"Over there?" Maraton repeated.

"Belgium, Germany," Selingman continued, "Germany chiefly. Our Socialism has done better for us than that. It has kindled a little fire in the heart of the men, and from its warmth has sprung something of that self-respect which will be the seed of the new humanity. I want you over there, Maraton. I want to show you. Your heart will warm with joy. God, what food for hell are your manufacturers here! How they'll burn!"

"The curse of England is its terrible middle class," Maraton said slowly. "The present generation is the first even to dimly realise it. Our aristocracy is no better nor any worse than the aristocracy of other nations; rather better, perhaps, than worse. But our middle class rules the land. They represent the voting power. They conceal their real sentiments under the name of Liberalism, they keep their heel upon the neck of Labour. I tell you, when the revolution comes, it will be Hampstead and Kensington the mob will sack and burn, not Park Lane and Grosvenor Square."

"You're right," Selingman agreed; "of course you're right. You and I make no mistakes. We are of the order of those whose eyes were touched in the cradle. Maraton, sometimes I am sorry I'm an artist, sometimes I loathe this sense of beauty which drives my pen into the pleasanter ways. There's only one thing in the world for you and me to work for. The world to-day doesn't deserve the offerings of the artist until it has purged itself. I waste my time writing plays, but then, after all, I am not English. If those were my people, Maraton, I doubt whether my pen could ever have wandered even for a moment into the pleasant ways."

Maraton sighed.

"There is America, too," he groaned.

"A conglomeration," Selingman declared hastily, "not to be reckoned with yet as a nation. What is born amongst the older peoples must find its way there by natural law. It is not a country for commencements. England—it is England where the harvest is ripe. What are you doing, man?"

Maraton looked thoughtfully out of the window. The train was gathering speed; they were travelling now at a great pace. Outside, the twilight was fading. A black cloud had passed across the rising moon. The electric light illuminated the carriage. It was almost as though they were passing through a tunnel.

"You ask me almost the saddest question one could ask," he replied gently. "I am working for posterity. There is no other course. I called those people together to-night at Sheffield for the sake of half a crown a week extra wages. It will make life a little easier for them, and I suppose every atom of prosperity must count in the sum of their future and their children's future."

"Spent in beer, most likely," Selingman muttered. "Why not?" Maraton exclaimed. "The possession of money to spend in luxuries of any sort must add something, at least, to their dignity. It means a lightening of the heart for a moment, an impulse of gladness. Why should we judge? Beer is only a prototype of other things. Then, Selingman, mark this. I brought the men of Lancashire out on strike some few weeks ago, and Sheffield now is following suit. It is a matter of a few shillings a week only, it is true, but I am very careful to tell them always that it is simply a compromise which I am advocating. These small increases are nothing. The operatives have a nature-given right to a share in the product of their labour. In these days their slave hire is thrown at them by an interloping person who calls himself an employer. In the days to come it will be different."

"You beat time, then!" Selingman cried. "You head the waves! My friend Maraton, they are right, those who turned me out of my villa at Versailles and sent me over to you. They were right, indeed! I have business with you, man—an inspiration to share. Ours is a great meeting. You know Maxendorf?"

"By name," Maraton admitted, a little startled.

"A profound thinker," Selingman declared, "a mighty thinker, a giant, a pioneer. I tell you that he sees, Maraton. He has pitched his tent upon the hill-top. What do you know of him?"

"Chiefly," Maraton replied, "that he is an aristocrat, a diplomatist, and the future ambassador here of a country I do not love."

Selingman drained a glass of champagne before he answered. He lit another of his long, thin cigars and smoked furiously.

"Aristocrat—yes," he assented, "but you do not know Maxendorf. He will be a joy to you, man. Oh, he sees! The day of the millions is coming, and he knows it. On the Continent our middle class isn't like yours. The conflict will never be so terrible. Thank God, our Labour stands already with its feet upon the ground. With us, development is all that is necessary. But you—you are up against a cul-de-sac, a black mountain of prejudice and custom. Nothing can save you but an earthquake or a revolution, and you know it. You came to England with those ideas, Maraton. You have turned opportunist. It was the only thing left for you. You didn't happen to see the one way out. To-morrow it will be a new day with you. To-morrow we will show you."

They were rushing into London now. Selingman rose to his feet.

"At seven o'clock to-morrow I shall fetch you," he announced, "that is, if I do not come in the morning. I may come before—I may give you the whole day for your own. I make no promise. Your address—write it down. I have no memory."

Maraton wrote it and passed it over. Selingman thrust it into his pocket.

"I go to work," he cried. "Some part of the genius of your voice shall tremble to-morrow in the genius of my prose. I promise you that. 'Listen,' our friend Maxendorf would say, 'to the vainest man in Europe!' But I know. No man knows himself save himself. Adieu!"



CHAPTER XXVII

The lengthy reports of his Sheffield visit and speeches, of which the newspapers made great capital, an extraordinary impression of the same in Selingman's wonderful prose, and the caprice of a halfpenny paper, made Maraton suddenly the most talked about man in England. A notoriety which he would have done much to have avoided was forced upon him. Early on the morning following his return, his house was besieged with a little stream of journalists, photographers, politicians, men and women of all orders and degrees, seeking for a few moments' interview with the man of the hour. Maraton retreated precipitately into his smaller study at the back of the house, and left Aaron to cope as well as he might with the assailing host. Every now and then the telephone bell rang, and Aaron made his report.

"There are fourteen men here who want to interview you," he announced, "all from good papers. If you won't be interviewed, some of them want a photograph."

"Send them away," Maraton directed. "Tell them the only photograph I ever had taken is in the hands of the Chicago police."

"There's the editor here himself from the Bi-Weekly."

"My compliments and excuses," Maraton replied. "I will be interviewed by no one."

"There's a representative from the Oracle here," Aaron continued, "who wants to know your exact position in connection with the Labour Party. What shall I say?"

"Tell him to apply to Mr. Dale!" Maraton answered.

"Mr. Foley and Lady Elisabeth Landon are outside in a car. Mr. Foley's compliments, and if you could spare a moment, they would be glad to come in and see you."

Maraton hesitated.

"You had better let them come in.

"Shall I go?" Julia asked.

Maraton shook his head.

"Stay where you are," he enjoined. "Perhaps they will go sooner, if they see that I am at work with you."

Mr. Foley was in his best and happiest mood. He shook hands heartily with Maraton. Elisabeth said nothing at all, but Maraton was conscious of one swift look into his eyes, and of the—fact that her fingers rested in his several seconds longer than was necessary.

"We are profoundly mortified, both my niece and I," Mr. Foley said. "Never have I had so many journalists on my doorstep, even on that notorious Thursday when they thought that I was going to declare war. I really fancy, Maraton, that they are going to make a celebrity of you. Have you seen the papers?"

"I have read Selingman's sketch," Maraton replied.

"They say," Mr. Foley went on, "that he wrote all night at the office in Fleet Street, and that his sheets were flung into type as he wrote them. Selingman, too—the great Selingman! You know him?"

"He travelled down from Sheffield with me last night," Maraton answered.

"A more dangerous person even than you," Mr. Foley observed, "and an Anglophobe. Never mind, what did we call about, Elisabeth?"

"Well, we were really on our way to the city," his niece reminded him. "It was you who suggested, when we were at the top of the Square, that we should call in and see Mr. Maraton."

"There was something in my mind," Mr. Foley persisted. "I remember. Next Friday is the last day of the session, you know, Mr. Maraton. We want you to go down to Scotland with us for a week."

Maraton shook his head.

"It is very kind of you," he said, "but I shall take no holiday. I need none. I have endless work here during the vacation. There are some industries I have scarcely looked into at all. And there is my Bill, and the draft of another one to follow. Thank you very much, Mr. Foley, all the same."

Elisabeth set down the illustrated paper which she had picked up. She looked across at Maraton.

"Don't you think for one week, Mr. Maraton," she suggested softly, "that you could bring your work with you. You could have a study in a quiet corner of the house, and if you did not care to bring a secretary, I would promise you the services of an amateur one."

Perhaps by accident, as she spoke, she glanced across at Julia, and perhaps by accident Julia at that moment happened to glance up. Their eyes met. Julia, from the grim loneliness of her own world, looked steadfastly at this exquisite type of the things in life which she hated.

"You are very kind," Maraton repeated, "but indeed I must not think of it. It seems to me," he went on, after a slight hesitation, "that every time lately when I have stood at the halting of two ways, and have had to make up my mind which to follow, I have been forced by circumstances to choose the easier way. This time, at least, my duty is quite plain. I have work to do in London which I cannot neglect."

Elisabeth picked up the paper which she had set down the moment before. Her eyes had been quick to appreciate the smothered fierceness of Julia's gaze. At Maraton she did not glance.

"Well, I am sorry," Mr. Foley said. "You are a young man now, Maraton, but one works the better for a change. I didn't come to talk shop, but you've set a nice hornet's nest about our heads up in Sheffield."

"There are many more to follow," Maraton assured him.

Mr. Foley chuckled. His sense of humour was indomitable.

"If there is one thing in the Press this morning," he declared, "more pronounced than the diatribes upon your speech, it is the number of compliments paid to me for my perspicuity in extending the hand of friendship to the most dangerous political factor at present existent,—vide the Oracle. I've wasted many hours arguing with some of my colleagues. If I had known what was coming, I might just as well have sat tight and waited for to-day. I am vindicated, whitewashed. Only the Opposition are furious. They are trying to claim you as a natural member of the Radical Party. Shouldn't be surprised if they didn't approach you to-day sometime."

Maraton smiled.

"The people I am in the most disgrace with," he observed, "are my own little lot."

"That needn't worry you," Mr. Foley rejoined. "Our Labour Members are not a serious body. The forces they represent are all right, but they seem to have a perfectly devilish gift of selecting the wrong representatives. . . . You'll be in the House this afternoon?" Certainly!

"I shall be rather curious to see what sort of a reception they give you," Mr. Foley continued. "You couldn't manage to walk in with me, I suppose? It would mean such a headline for the Daily Oracle!"

Elisabeth glanced up from her paper.

"I am afraid, uncle," she remarked, "that Punch was right when it said that your sense of humour would always prevent your becoming a great politician."

"Let Punch wait until I claim the title," Mr. Foley retorted, smiling. "No man has ever consented to be Premier who was a great politician—in these days, at any rate. I doubt, even, whether our friend Maraton would be a successful Premier. I fancy that if ever he aspires so high, it will be to the Dictatorship of the new republic."

Maraton sighed.

"Even the Oracle," he reminded them, "is convinced that I have no personal ambitions."

Mr. Foley took up his hat. He had been in high good humour throughout the interview. Already he was looking forward to meeting his colleagues.

"Well, we'll be off, Maraton," he said. "We had no right to come and disturb you at this time in the morning, only we were really anxious to book you for our quiet week in Scotland. Change your mind about it, there's a good fellow. I shall be your helpless prey up there. You could make of me what you would." Maraton shook his head very firmly.

"It is not possible," he answered. "Please do not think that I do not appreciate your hospitality—and your kindness, Lady Elisabeth."

She looked at him for a moment rather curiously. There was something of reproach in her eyes; something, too, which he failed to understand. She did not speak at all.

"Miss Thurnbrein," Maraton begged, "will you see Mr. Foley and Lady Elisabeth out? It sounds cowardly, doesn't it," he added, "but I really don't think that I dare show myself."

Julia rose slowly to her feet and passed towards the door, which Maraton was holding open. She lingered outside while Maraton shook hands with his two visitors, then would have hurried on in advance, but that Elisabeth stopped her.

"Do tell me," she asked, "you are the Miss Thurnbrein who has written so much upon woman labour, aren't you?"

"I have written one or two articles," Julia replied, looking straight ahead of her.

"I read one in the National Review," Elisabeth continued, "and another in one of the evening papers. I can't tell you, Miss Thurnbrein, how interested I was."

Julia turned and looked slowly at her questioner. Her cheeks seemed more pallid than usual, her eyes were full of smouldering fire.

"I didn't write to interest people," she said calmly. "I wrote to punish them, to let them know a little of what they were guilty."

"But surely," Elisabeth protested, "you make some excuse for those who have really no opportunity for finding out? There is a society now, I am told, for watching over the conditions of woman labour in the east end. Is that so really?"

"There is such a society," Julia admitted. "I am the secretary of it."

"You must let me join," Elisabeth begged. "Please do. Won't you come and see me one afternoon—any afternoon—and tell me all about it? Indeed I am in earnest," she went on, a little puzzled at the other's unresponsiveness. "This isn't just a whim. I am really interested in these matters, but it is so hard to help, unless one is put in the right way."

"The time has passed," Julia pronounced, "when patronage is of any assistance to such societies as the one we were speaking of. Nothing is of any use now but hard, grim work. We don't want money. We don't need support of any kind whatever. We need work and brains."

"I am afraid," Elisabeth said, as she held out her hand, "that you think I am incapable of either."

Julia's lips were tightly compressed. She made no reply. Mr. Foley glanced back at her curiously as they stepped into the car.

"What a singularly forbidding young woman!" he remarked.

Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders. It is given to women to understand much! . . . The car glided off. As they neared the corner of the Square, they passed a stout, foreign-looking man with an enormous head, a soft grey hat set far back, a quantity of fair hair, and the ingenuous, eager look of a child. He was hurrying towards the corner house and scarcely glanced in their direction. Mr. Foley, however, leaned forward with interest.

"Who is that strange-looking person?" Elisabeth asked.

Mr. Foley became impressive.

"One of the greatest writers and philosophers of the day," he replied. "I expect he is on his way to see Maraton. That was Henry Selingman."



CHAPTER XXVIII

Selingman took little heed of the cordon around Maraton. He brushed them all to one side, and when at last confronted by the final barrier, in the shape of Julia, he only patted her gently upon the back.

"Ah, but my dear child," he exclaimed, "you do not understand! Listen. I raise my voice, I shout—like this—'Maraton, it is I who am here—Selingman!' You see, he will come if he is within hearing. You know of me, you pale-faced child? You have heard of Selingman, is it not so?"

Before Julia could answer, the door of the study was opened.

"Come in," Maraton called out from an invisible place.

Selingman, with a little bow of triumph to Julia, passed down the passage and into the library. He threw his hat upon the sofa and held out both his hands to Maraton. Julia, who had followed him, sank into a chair before her typewriter.

"I have made you famous, my friend," he declared. "You may quote these words in after life as representing the full sublimity of my conceit, but it is true. Have you read my 'Appreciation' in the Oracle?"

"I have," Maraton admitted, smiling.

"The real thing," Selingman continued, "crisp and crackling with genius. As they read it, the photographers took down their cameras, the editors whispered to their journalists to be off to Russell Square, the ladies began to pen their cards of invitation."

"That's all very well," Maraton remarked, a little grimly, "but where do I come in? I have no time for the journalists, I refuse to be photographed, and I am not likely to accept the invitations. It takes my two secretaries half their time to wade through my correspondence and to decide which of it is to be pitched into the waste-paper basket. I am not a dealer in quack remedies, or an actor. I don't want advertisement."

"Pooh, my friend!—pooh!" Selingman retorted, drawing out his worn leather case and thrusting one of the long black cigars into his mouth. "Everything that is spontaneous in life is good for you—even advertisement. But listen to my news. It is great news, believe me. . . . A match, please."

Maraton struck a vesta and handed it to him. Selingman transferred the flame to a piece of paper from the waste-paper basket and puffed contentedly at his cigar.

"I light not cigars with a flavour like this, with a wax vesta," he explained. "Where was I? Oh, I know—the news! This morning I have received a message. Maxendorf has left for England." Maraton smiled.

"Is that all?" he said. "I could have told you that myself. The fact is announced in all the morning papers."

"He will be at the Ritz Hotel to-night," Selingman continued, unruffled. "When he arrives, I shall be there. We speak together for an hour and then I come for you."

"I shall be glad to meet Maxendorf," Maraton agreed quietly. "He is a great man. But don't you think for his first few days in England it would be better to leave him alone, so far as I am concerned?"

"Later I will remind you of those words," Selingman declared. "For a genius you see no further than the end of your nose. They tell me that when you landed, there were prophets in the East End who rose up and shouted—'Maraton is come! Maraton is here!' No more—just the simple announcement—as though that fact alone were changing life. Very well. I will be your prophet and you shall be the people. I will say to you, as they cried to the Children of Israel groaning under their toil—Maxendorf has come! Maxendorf is here!"

Maraton was silent for a moment. He was sitting on the edge of the table, with folded arms. His visitor was pacing up and down the room, blowing out dense volumes of smoke.

"You have more in your mind, Selingman, than you have told me," he said.

"What is there that is hidden from the eye of genius?" Selingman cried, with a theatrical wave of the hand. "More than I have told you indeed—more than I shall tell you. One thing, at least, I have learnt in my struggles with the pen, and that is to avoid the anti-climax. It is a great thing to remember that. So I am dumb, I speak no more. . . Why don't you send your poor little secretary out for a walk? Mademoiselle, forgive me, but he works you too hard."

She looked up at him, smiling.

"I worked very much harder before I came here," she answered quietly.

"I am fortunate in my secretary," Maraton interposed. "This is Miss Julia Thurnbrein, Selingman. I don't suppose you read our reviews, but Miss Thurnbrein is an authority on woman labour."

"I read nothing," Selingman declared, moving over and grasping her by the hand. "I read nothing. People are my books. I am forty-five years old. I have done with reading. I know a great deal, I have read a great deal; I read no more. Miss Julia Thurnbrein, you say. Well, I like the name of Julia. Only, young lady, you would do better to spend a little more time with the roses, and a little less under the roofs of this grey city. Youth, you know, youth is everything. You work best for others by realising the joys of life yourself. I, too, am a philanthropist, Miss Julia—I don't like your other name—I, too, think and write for others. I, too, have dreams of a millennium, of days when the huge wheel shall be driven to a different tune, and faces be lifted to the skies that hang now towards the gutters. But details annoy me, details I cannot master. I do not want to know how many sufferers there are in the world and what particular sum they starve upon. I leave others to do that work. I only point forward to the day of emancipation. Put your hand in mine and I will show you in time where the clouds will first break."

Julia smiled at him a little sadly.

"Perhaps it is as well," she said, "that we have champions who do not care for detail. It is detail and the sight of suffering which sap all the enthusiasms out of us before our time."

Selingman frowned at her angrily. He blew out another cloud of smoke.

"You make me angry," he asserted. "I love your sex, I adore womanhood. I look upon a beautiful woman as a gift to the world. Beauty is a gift to be made much of, to be nourished, to be glorified. You are tired, young woman. You work too hard. You have the rare gift—has any one ever told you that you are beautiful?"

Julia stared at him, her lips a little parted, half angry, half wondering.

"Look at her," Selingman continued, turning to Maraton. "She has the slim body, the long, delicate figure of those Botticellis we all love—except the Russians. I never yet met a Russian who could appreciate a Botticelli. And her eyes—look at them, man. And you let her sit there till the hollows are forming in her cheeks. Be ashamed of yourself. Take her out into the country. One works just as well in the sunshine. You do better work if you can smell flowers growing around you while your brain is active. Lend her to me for a week. I'll take her to my cottage in the Ardennes. There I live with the sun—breakfast at sunrise, to bed at sunset. I will dictate to you, Miss Julia—dictate beautiful things. You shall be proud always. You shall say—'I have worked for Selingman. Conceited ass!' you will probably add. Thank Heavens that I am conceited! Nothing is so splendid in life as to know your own worth. Nothing makes so much for happiness. . . . Maraton, where shall I find you to-night?"

"In the House of Commons, probably," Maraton replied. "But take my advice. Leave Maxendorf alone for a few days."

"We will see—we will see," Selingman went on, a little impatiently. "Come, I have nothing to do—nothing whatever. I came to London to see you, Maraton. You must put up with me. Work—put it away. The sun shines. Let us all go into the country. I will get a car. Or what of the river? Perhaps not. I am too restless, I cannot sit still. I will walk about always. And I cannot swim. We will take a car and sometimes we will walk. I go to fetch it now, eh?"

Maraton glanced helplessly at Julia. They both laughed.

"I have to be back at four o'clock," the former said. "I have an appointment at the House of Commons then."

"Excellent!" Selingman declared. "I go there with you. Your House of Commons always fascinates me. I hear you speak, perhaps? No? What does it matter? I will hear the others drone. I go to fetch a car."

Maraton held out his hand.

"I have a car," he observed. "It is waiting now at the back entrance. You had better get your things on, Miss Thurnbrein. I can see that we have come under the influence of a master spirit."

She looked at the pile of letters by her side, but Maraton only shook his head.

"We must parody his own phrase and declare that 'Selingman is here!'" he said. "Go and put your things on and tell Aaron. We will steal out like conspirators at the back door."

They lunched at a roadside inn in Buckinghamshire, an inn ivy-covered, with a lawn behind, and a garden full of cottage flowers. Selingman with his own hands dragged out the table from the little sitting-room, through the open windows to a shaded corner of the lawn, drew the cork from a bottle of wine, and taking off his coat, started to make a salad.

"Insects everywhere," he remarked cheerfully. "Hold your parasol over my salad, please, Miss Julia. So! What does it matter? Where there are flowers and trees there must be insects. Let them live their day of life."

"So long as we don't eat them!" Julia protested.

"I have tasted insects in South America which were delicious," Selingman assured them. "There—leave your parasol over the salad, and, Maraton, move the ice-pail a little more into the shade. Now, while they set the luncheon, we will walk in that little flower garden, and I will tell you, if you like, a story of mine I once wrote, the story of two roses. I published it, alas! It is so hard to save even our most beautiful thoughts from the vulgarity of print, in these days where everything—love and wine, and even the roses themselves—cost money. Bah!"

"The story, please," Julia begged.

He walked in the middle and took an arm of each of his companions.

"So you would hear my little story?" he exclaimed. "Then listen."

They obeyed. Presently he forgot himself. His eyes were half-closed, his thoughts seemed to have wandered into the strangest places. As his allegory proceeded, he seemed to drift away from all knowledge of his immediate surroundings. He chose his words always with the most exquisite and precise care. They listened, entranced. Then suddenly he stopped short in the path.

"For half an hour have I been giving of myself," he declared. "Almost I faint. Come."

He tightened his grasp upon their arms and started walking with short, abrupt footsteps—and great haste for the luncheon table.

"Fool that I am!" he muttered. "It is one o'clock, and I lunch always at half-past twelve. I must eat quickly. See, the waiter looks at us sorrowfully. What of the omelette, I wonder? Come, Miss Julia, at my right hand there. Ah! was I not right? The roses are creeping already—creeping into their proper place. Sit back in your chair and eat slowly and drink the yellow wine, and listen to the humming of those bees. So soon you will become normal, a woman, just what you should be. Heavens! It is well that I came to see Maraton. When I saw you this morning in that room, I said to myself—'There is a human creature who half lives. What a sin to half live!' . . . Taste that salad, Maraton. Taste it, man, and admit that it is well that I came."

They were alone in the garden—the inn was a little way off the main road and they had discovered it entirely by accident. Both Julia and Maraton yielded gracefully enough to the influence of their companion's personality.

"Whether it is well for us or not," Maraton remarked, as he watched the wine flow into his glass, "to yield up one's will like this, to become even as a docile child, I do not know, but it is very pleasant. It is an hour of detachment."

"It is the secret of youth, the secret of life, the secret of joy," Selingman declared. "Detachment is the word. Life would make slaves of all of us, if one did not sometimes square one's shoulders and say—'No, thank you, I have had enough! Good-bye! I return presently.' One needs a will, perhaps, but then, what is life without will? I myself was at work. The greatest theatrical manager in the world kept sentry before my door. The greatest genius who ever trod upon the stage sent me frantic messages every few hours. Then they spoke to me of Maraton. I heard the cry—'Maraton is here!' I heard the thunder from across the seas. Up from my desk, out from my room—hysterics, entreaties, nothing stopped me. No luggage worth mentioning. Away I come, to London, to Sheffield—what a place! To-morrow—to-morrow or the next day I return, full of life and vigour. It is splendid. I broke away. No one else could have done it. I left them in tears. What did I care? It is for myself—for myself I do these things. Unless I myself am at my best, what have I to give the world? Miss Julia, your health! To the roses, and may they never leave your cheeks! No, don't go yet. There are strawberries coming."

Maraton and his host sat together for a few moments in the garden before they started on their return journey. Selingman leaned across the table. He had forgotten to put on his coat, and he sat unabashed in his shirt sleeves. He had drunk a good deal of wine, and the little beads of perspiration stood out upon his forehead.

"Maraton," he said, "you need me. You are like the others. When the fire has touched their eyes and indeed they see the things that are, they fall on their knees and they tear away at the weeds and rubbish that cumber the earth, and they never lift their eyes, and soon their frame grows weary and their heart cold. Be wise, man. The mark is upon you. Those live best and work best in this world who have a soul for its beauties. Women, for instance," he went on, smoking furiously. "What help do you make of women? None! You sit at one end of the table, your secretary at the other. You don't look at her. She might have pig's eyes, for anything you know about it. Idiot! And she—not quite as bad, perhaps. Women feel a little, you know, that they don't show. Why not marry, Maraton? No? Perhaps you are right. And yet women are wonderful. You can't do your greatest work, Maraton, you never will reach your greatest work, unless a woman's hand is yours."

They rode back to London in comparative silence. Selingman frankly and openly slept, with his grey hat on the back of his head, his untidy feet upon the opposite cushions, his mouth wide open. Maraton more than once found himself watching Julia covertly. There was no doubt that in her strange, quiet way she was beautiful. As he sat and looked at her, his thoughts travelled back to the little garden, the sheltered corner under the trees, the curious sense of relaxation which in that short hour Selingman had inspired. Was the man indeed right, his philosophy sound? Was there indeed wisdom in the loosening of the bonds? He met her eyes suddenly, and she smiled at him. With her—well, he scarcely dared to tell himself that he knew how it was. He closed his eyes again. A thought had come to him sweeter than any yet.

As they neared London, Selingman awoke, smiled blandly upon them, brushed the cigar ash from his coat and waistcoat, put on his hat and looked about him with interest.

"So we are arrived," he said presently. "The Houses of Parliament, eh? I enter with you, Maraton. You find me a corner where I sleep while the others speak, and wake at the sound of your voice. Afterwards, late to-night, we shall go to Maxendorf."



CHAPTER XXIX

It happened to be a quiet evening in the House, and Maraton and Selingman dined together at a little before eight o'clock. Selingman's personality was too unusual to escape attention, and as his identity became known, a good many passers-by looked at them curiously. Some one sent word to Mr. Foley of their presence, and very soon he came in and joined them.

"Six years ago this month, Mr. Selingman," the Prime Minister reminded him, "we met at Madame Hermene's in Paris. You were often there in those days."

Selingman nodded vigorously.

"I remember it perfectly," he said—"perfectly. It was a wonderful evening. An English Cabinet Minister, the President of France, Coquelin, Rostand, and I myself were there. A clever woman! She knew how to attract. In England there is nothing of the sort, eh?"

"Nothing," Mr. Foley admitted. "I am going to beg you both to come on to me to-night. My niece is receiving a few friends. But I can promise you nothing of the same class of attraction, Mr. Selingman."

"We cannot come," Selingman declared, without hesitation. "I take my friend Maraton somewhere. As we sit here, Mr. Foley, we have spoken of politics. You are a great man. If any one can lift your country from the rut along which she is travelling, you will do it. A Unionist Prime Minister and you hold out the hand to Maraton! But what foresight! What acumen! You see beyond the thunder-clouds the things that we have seen. Not only do you see them, but you have the courage to follow your convictions. What a mess you are making of Parties!"

Mr. Foley smiled.

"Ah, well, you see," he said, "I am no politician. It is the one claim I have upon posterity that I am the first non-politician who ever became Prime Minister."

"Excellent! Excellent!" Selingman murmured.

"Maraton, alas!" Mr. Foley continued, "is only half a convert. As yet he wears his yoke heavily."

"A queer place for him," Selingman declared. "I looked down and saw him there this evening. I listened to the dozen words he spoke. He seemed to me rather like a lawyer, who, having a dull case, says what he has to say and sits down. Does he do any real good here, Mr. Foley?"

"It is from these walls," the Prime Minister reminded him, "that the laws of the country are framed."

Selingman shook his head slowly.

"Academically correct," he admitted, "and yet, walls of brick and stone may crumble and split. The laws which endure come into being through the power of the people."

"Don't throw cold water upon my compromise," Mr. Foley begged. "We are hoping for great things. We are fighting the class against which you have written so splendidly; we are fighting the bourgeoisie, tooth and nail. One thing is certainly written—that if Maraton here stands by my side for the next seven years, Labour will have thrown off one, at least, of the shackles that bind her. Isn't it better to release her slowly and gradually, than to destroy her altogether by trying more violent means?"

"Ah, who knows!" Selingman remarked enigmatically. "Who knows! . . . And what of the rest of the evening? Are there more laws to be made—more speeches?"

"Finished," Mr. Foley replied. "There is nothing more to be done. That is why I am proposing that you two men go to your rooms, make yourselves look as much like Philistines as you can, and come and pay your respects to my niece. Lady Elisabeth is complaining a little about you, Maraton," he went on. "You are a rare visitor."

"Lady Elisabeth is very kind," Maraton murmured.

"I wish that we could come," Selingman said. "If I lived here long, I would bustle our friend Maraton about. To-day I have had him a little way into the country, him and his pale-faced secretary, and I have poured sunshine down upon them, and wine, and good things to eat. Oh, they are very narrow, both of them, when they look out at life! Not so am I. I love to feel the great thoughts swinging through my brain, but I love also the good things of life. I love the interludes of careless joys, I love all the pleasant things our bodies were meant to appreciate. Those who do not, they wither early. I do not like pale cheeks. Therefore, I wish that I could stay a little time with this friend of ours. I would see that he paid his respects to all the charming ladies who were ready to welcome him."

Mr. Foley laughed softly.

"What a marvellous mixture you would make, you two!" he observed. "Your prose and Maraton's eloquence, your philosophy and his tenacity. So you won't come? Well, I am disappointed."

"We go to see a friend of mine," Selingman announced. "We go to pay our respects to a man famous indeed, a man who will make history in your country."

Mr. Foley's expression suddenly changed. He leaned a little across the table.

"Are you speaking of Maxendorf?"

Selingman nodded vigorously.

"Since you have guessed it—yes," he admitted. "We go to Maxendorf. I take Maraton there. It will be a great meeting. We three—we represent much. A great meeting, indeed."

Mr. Foley's face was troubled.

"Maxendorf only arrives to-night," he remarked presently.

"What matter?" Selingman replied. "He is like me—he is tireless, and though his body be weary, his brain is ever working."

"What do they say on the Continent about his coming?" Mr. Foley enquired. "We thought that he was settled for life in Rome."

Selingman shook his head portentously.

"Politics," he declared, "ah! in the abstract they are wonderful, but in the concrete they do not interest me. Maxendorf has come here, doubtless, with great schemes in his mind."

"Schemes of friendship or of enmity?" Mr. Foley asked swiftly.

Selingman's shoulders were hunched.

"Who can tell? Who can tell the thoughts which his brain has conceived? Maxendorf is a silent man. He is the first people's champion who has ever held high office in his country. You see, he has the gifts which no one can deny. He moves forward to whatever place he would occupy, and he takes it. He is in politics as I in literature."

The man's magnificent egotism passed unnoticed. Curiously enough, the truth of it was so apparent that its expression seemed natural.

"I must confess," Mr. Foley said quietly, "to you two alone, that I had rather he had come at some other time. Selingman, you are indeed one of the happiest of the earth. You have no responsibilities save the responsibilities you owe to your genius. The only call to which you need listen is the call to give to the world the thoughts and music which beat in your brain. And with us, things are different. There is the future of a country, the future of an Empire, always at stake, when one sleeps and when one wakes."

Selingman nodded his head vigorously.

"Frankly," he admitted, "I sympathise with you. Responsibility I hate. And yours, Mr. Foley," he added, "is a great one. I am a friend of England. I am a friend of the England who should be. As your country is to-day, I fear that she has very few friends indeed, apart from her own shores. You may gain allies from reasons of policy, but you have not the national gifts which win friendship."

"How do you account for it?" Mr. Foley asked him.

"Your Press, for one thing," Selingman replied; "your Press, written for and inspired with the whole spirit of the bourgeoisie. You prate about your Empire, but you've never learnt yet to think imperially. But there, it is not for this I crossed the Channel. It is to be with Maraton."

"So long as you do not take him from me, I will not grudge you his company," Mr. Foley remarked, rising. "On the other hand, I would very much rather that you made your bow to my niece to-night than went to Maxendorf."

Maraton felt suddenly a twinge of something I which was almost compunction. Mr. Foley's face was white and tired. He had the air of a man oppressed with anxieties which he was doing his best to conceal.

"If I can," he said, "I should like very much to see Lady Elisabeth. Perhaps I shall be in time after our interview with Maxendorf, or before. I will go home and change, on the chance."

The Prime Minister nodded, but his slightly relaxed expression seemed to show that he appreciated Maraton's intention. Selingman looked after him gloomily as he left the room.

"What devilish impulse," he muttered, "leads these men to pass into your rotten English politics! It is like a poet trying to navigate a dredger. Bah!"

"Need you go into that gloomy chamber again, my friend?"

Maraton shook his head.

"I have finished," he declared. "There will be no division."

"But do you never speak there?"

"Up to now I have not uttered more than a dozen words or so," Maraton replied. "You try it yourself—try speaking to a crowd of well-dressed, well-fed, smug units of respectability, each with his mind full of his own affairs or the affairs of his constituency. You try it. You wouldn't find the words stream, I can tell you."

Selingman grunted.

"And now—what now?"

"To my rooms—to my house," Maraton announced, "while I change."

"It is good. I shall talk to your secretary. I shall talk to Miss Julia while you disappear. Shall I rob you, my friend?"

"You would rob me of a great deal if you took her away," Maraton answered, "but—"

Selingman interrupted him with a fiercely contemptuous exclamation.

"You have it—the rotten, insular conceit of these Englishmen! You think that she would not come? Do you think that if I were to say to her,—'Come and listen while I make garlands of words, while I take you through the golden doors!'—do you think that she would not put her hand in mine? Fancy—to live in my fairy chamber, to listen while I give shape and substance to all that I conceive—what woman would refuse!"