"He went out into the streets," Julia replied. "He will be back presently."

Aaron came in a few minutes later, struggling with the weight of the parcels he was carrying. He laid them down upon the sideboard, and turned towards Maraton with an air of triumph.

"I've been there, sir," he announced. "I've got the letters, your private dispatch box, and a lot of papers we needed. It's only the outside walls of the house that are charred. The fire was put out almost at once. And I've seen Ernshaw."

Maraton's eyes were lit with pleasure.

"You're a fine fellow, Aaron," he commended.

"I've got my bicycle, too," Aaron continued. "I can get half over London, if necessary, while you stay here."

"Tell me about Ernshaw?" Maraton begged quickly.

"He's loyal—they all are," Aaron cried. "Oh, you should hear him talk about Peter Dale and Graveling, and that lot! They're spread up north now, all of them, trying to kill the strike. And the men won't move anywhere. His own miners wouldn't listen to Dale. Mr. Foley sent him up to Newcastle in his motor-car. They played a garden hose on him and burned an effigy of himself, dressed in old woman's clothes. Mr. Foley's had the railway men to Downing Street twice, but they've never wavered. Ernshaw is splendid. There are seven of them, and Ernshaw's own words were that they've made up their minds that grass could grow in the tracks and hell fires scorch up the land before they'd go back to slavery. They're for you, sir, body and soul. They won't give in."

"Thank God!" Maraton muttered. "What about the mob?"

"Loafers and wastrels," Aaron exclaimed indignantly, "dirty parasites of humanity, thieves; not an honest worker amongst them! They're the sort who shouted themselves hoarse on Mafeking night and hid in their holes when the war drums were calling. The authorities got a hundred police from somewhere, and they crumbled away like rats running for their holes. Ernshaw asks you not to go back to Russell Square because of the difficulty of getting at you, but this was his message to you, sir, when I told him of your arrival. He begged me to tell you that they were the scum of the earth; that from Newcastle to the Thames the men who stand idle to-day wait in faith and trust for your word and yours only. He will be here before long."

Selingman nodded ponderously. His mouth was very full, but he did not delay his speech.

"You have brought a splendid message, young man," he pronounced. "Sit down and eat with us. Exercise your imagination but a little and you will indeed believe that you have been bidden to a feast of Lucullus. Has any one, I wonder, ever appreciated the marvellous and yet subtle sympathy which can exist between potted meat and biscuits—especially when washed down with hock? Join us, my young friend Aaron. Abandon yourself with us to the pleasure of the table. We will discuss any subject upon the earth—except butter! Miss Julia, do you know where I shall go when I leave here? No? I go to seek chocolates and flowers for you."

She laughed gaily.

"Chocolates and flowers," she repeated, "at ten o'clock at night! And for me, too!"

"And why not for you?" Selingman demanded, almost indignantly. "You are like all enthusiasts of your sex. You are too intense, you concentrate too much. You have lived in a cold and austere atmosphere. You have waited a long time for the hand which is to lead you into the sunshine."

She laughed at him once more, yet perhaps this time a little wistfully.

"Very well," she promised, "I will reform. I will eat all the chocolates you can bring me, and I will sleep with your flowers at my bedside. There! Am I improving?"

Selingman rose to his feet. He drained his glass of wine and lit one of his long black cigars by the flame of the candle.

"Dear Julia," he said, "you have spoken. I start on the quest of my life."



CHAPTER XXXVI

Selingman had scarcely left the place when Ernshaw arrived, piloted into the room by Aaron, who had been waiting for him below. Maraton and he gripped hands heartily. During the first few days of the campaign they had been constant companions.

"At least," he declared, as he looked into Maraton's face, "whatever the world may think of the justice of their cause, no one will ever any longer deny the might of the people."

"None but fools ever did deny it," Maraton answered.

"How are they in the north?" Ernshaw asked.

"United and confident," Maraton assured him. "Up there I don't think they realise the position so much as here. In Nottingham and Leicester, people are leading their usual daily lives. It was only as we neared London that one began to understand."

"London is paralysed with fear," Ernshaw asserted, "perhaps with reason. The Government are working the telephones and telegraph to a very small extent. The army engineers are doing the best they can with the East Coast railways."

"What about Dale and his friends?"

Ernshaw's dark, sallow face was lit with triumph.

"They are flustered to death like a lot of rabbits in the middle of a cornfield, with the reapers at work'!" he exclaimed. "Heckled and terrified to' death! Cecil was at them the other night. 'Are you not,' he cried, 'the representatives of the people?' Wilmott was in the House—one of us—treasurer for the Amalgamated Society, and while Dale was hesitating, he sprang up. 'Before God, no!' he answered. 'There isn't a Labour Member in this House who stands for more than the constituency he represents, or is here for more than the salary he draws. The cause of the people is in safer hands.' Then they called for you. There have been questions about your whereabouts every day. They wanted to impeach you for high treason. Through all the storm, Foley is the only man who has kept quiet. He sent for me. I referred him to you."

"The time for conferences is past," Maraton said firmly.

"We know it," Ernshaw replied. "What's the good of them? A sop for the men, a pat on the back for their leaders, a buttering Press, and a public who cares only how much or how little they are inconvenienced. We have had enough of that. My men must wake into a new life, or sleep for ever."

"What is the foreign news?" Maraton asked.

"All uncertain. The air is full of rumours. Several Atlantic liners are late, and reports have come by wireless of a number of strange cruisers off Queenstown. Personally, I don't think that anything definite has been done. The moment to strike isn't yet. The Admiralty have been working like slaves to get coal to their fleet."

"You came alone?" Maraton enquired.

Ernshaw nodded.

"I came alone because the seven of us are as men with one heart. We are with you into hell!"

"And the men," Maraton continued,—"I wonder how many of them realise what they may have to go through."

"You stirred something up in them," Ernshaw said slowly, "something they have never felt before. You made them feel that they have the right of nature to live a dignified life, and to enjoy a certain share of the profits of their labour, not as a grudgingly given wage but as a law-established right. There's a feeling born in them that's new—it's done them good already. I never heard so little grumbling at the pay. I think it's in their heart that they're fighting for a principle this time, and not for an extra coin dragged from the unwilling pockets of men who have no human right to be the janitors of what their labour produces. They've got the proper feeling at last, sir. You've touched something which is as near the religious sense as anything a man can feel who has no call that way. It's something that will last, too! Their womenkind have laid hold of it. When they start life again, they mean to start on a different plane."

"How are the accounts lasting out?" Maraton asked.

Ernshaw produced some books from his pocket and they sat down at the table.

"We're not so badly off for money," he declared. "It's the purchasing power of it that's making things difficult. I have spread the people out as much as I can. It's the best chance, but next week will be a black one."

They pored over the figures for a time. Outside, the streets were almost as silent as death. Suddenly the door was thrown open, and they both looked up hastily. Selingman stood there, but Selingman transformed. All the colour seemed to have left his cheeks; his eyes were burning with a steely fire. He closed the door behind him and he shivered where he stood. Maraton sprang to his feet.

"What, in God's name, has happened, man?" he cried. "Quick!"

Selingman came a little further into the room. He raised his hands above his head; his voice was thick with horror.

"I have betrayed you!" he moaned. "I have betrayed the people!"

He stood there, still trembling. Maraton poured him out wine, but he swept it away.

"No more of those things for me!" he continued. "Listen to my tale. If there is a God, may he hear me! By every line I have written, by every world of fancy into which I have been led, by every particle of what nations have called my genius, I swear that I speak the truth!"

"I believe you," Maraton said. "Go on. Tell me quickly."

"I trusted Maxendorf," Selingman proceeded, his voice shaking, "trusted and loved him as a brother. I have been his tool and his dupe!"

Maraton felt himself suddenly at the edge of the world. He leaned over and looked into the abyss called hell. For a moment he shivered; then he set his teeth.

"Go on," he repeated.

"Maxendorf and I have spoken many times of the future of this country. The dream which he outlined for you, he has spoken of to me with glittering eyes, with heaving chest, with trembling voice. It was his scheme that I should take you to him. You, too, believed as I did. To-night I visited him. I stepped in upon the one weak moment of his life. He needed a confidant. He was bursting with joy and triumph. He showed me his heart; he showed me the great and terrible hatred which burns there for England and everything English. The people's man, he calls himself! He is for the people of his own country and his own country only! You and I have been the tools of his crafty schemes. This country, if he possesses it, he will occupy as a conqueror. He will set his heel upon it. He will demand the greatest indemnity of all times. And every penny of it will flow into his beloved land. We thought that the dawn had come, we poor, miserable and deluded victims of his craft. We are dooming the people of this country to generations of slavery!"

Maraton for a moment sat quite still. When he spoke, his tone was singularly matter-of-fact.

"Where is Maxendorf?" he asked.

"Still at the hotel. The Embassy was not ready, and he has made excuses. He is more his own master there."

Maraton turned to Ernshaw.

"Ernshaw," he begged, "wait here for me. Wait."

He took up his hat and left the room. Selingman stood almost as though he were praying.

"Now," he muttered, "is the time for the strong man!"



CHAPTER XXXVII

Into the salon of Maxendorf's suite at the Ritz Hotel, freed for a moment from its constant stream of callers, came suddenly, without announcement—from a place of hiding, indeed—Maraton. He stepped into the room swiftly and closed the door. Maxendorf was standing with his back to his visitor, bending over a map.

"Who's that?" he asked, without looking up "You, Franz? You, Beldeman?"

There was no reply. Maxendorf straightened his gaunt figure and turned around. He stood there motionless, the palm of one hand covering the map at which he had been gazing, the lamplight shining on his gaunt, strangely freckled face.

"You!" he muttered.

Maraton remained still speechless. Maxendorf stretched out his hand for the telephone, but before he could grasp it, his hand was struck into the air. He wasted no time asking useless questions. His visitor's face was enough.

"What have you to gain by this?" he demanded. "Even if you could take my life, it will alter nothing."

Maraton caught him fiercely by the throat. Maxendorf, notwithstanding his superior height, was powerless. He was forced slowly backwards across the couch, on to the floor. Maraton knelt by his side. His grasp was never for a second relaxed.

"I leave you to-night," Maraton whispered, "with a gasp or two of life in you, but remember this. If I fail to undo your work, as sure as I live, I will keep my word. My hand shall find your throat again—your throat, do you hear?—and shall hold you there, tighter and tighter, until the life slips out of your body, just as it is almost slipping now!"

Maxendorf was unconscious. Maraton suddenly threw him away. Then he left the room, rang for the lift and made his way once more out into the street. Piccadilly was a shadowy wilderness. St. James's Street was thronged with soldiers marching into the Park. Maraton pursued his way steadily into Pall Mall and Downing Street. Even here there were very few people, and the front of Mr. Foley's house was almost deserted, save for one or two curious loiterers and a couple of policemen. Maraton rang the bell and found no trouble in obtaining admittance. The butler, however, shook his head when asked if Mr. Foley was at home.

"Mr. Foley is at the War Office, sir," he announced. "We cannot tell what time to expect him."

"I shall wait," Maraton replied. "My business is of urgent importance."

The butler made no difficulty. He recognised Maraton as a guest of the house and he showed him into the smaller library, which was generally used as a waiting-room for more important visitors. It was the room in which Maraton had had his first conversation with Mr. Foley. He looked around him with faint, half painful curiosity. If was like a place which he had known well in some other life. It seemed impossible to believe that he was the same man, or that this was the same room. Yet it was barely four months ago! Too restless to sit still, he walked up and down the apartment with quick, unsteady footsteps. Then suddenly the door opened. Elisabeth appeared. She recognised Maraton and started. She looked at him with a fixed, incredulous stare.

"You?" she exclaimed. "You here? What do you want?"

"Your uncle," he answered. "How long will he be?"

She closed the door behind her with trembling fingers. Then she came further into the room and confronted him.

"Why are you here?" she demanded. "To gloat over your work?"

"To undo it, if I can," he replied quickly,—"a part of it, at any rate. I fell into a trap—Selingman and I. I've a way out, if there's time. I want your uncle."

"You mean it?" she begged feverishly, her face lightening. "Oh, don't raise our hopes again just to disappoint us!"

"I mean it," he reiterated. "I want your uncle. With his help, if he has the courage, if he dare face the inevitable, I'll break the railway strike to-night and the coal strike to-morrow."

She sat down suddenly. She, too, had changed during the last few months. Her face was thinner; there were lines under her eyes. She had lost something of the fresh, delicate splendour of youth which had made her seem so dazzling.

"I can't believe that you are in earnest," she faltered.

"There isn't any doubt about it," he assured her. "Send round and hurry your uncle."

She moved to the writing-table and wrote a few lines hastily. Then she rang the bell and gave them to a servant. She was still without a vestige of colour.

"I can't dare to feel hopeful," she observed gloomily, when the door had been closed and they were once more alone. "We trusted you before, we believed that everything would be well. You were brutal to us both—to me as well as to my uncle."

"I made no promises," he reminded her. "I broke no ties. I was a people's man; I still am. I took the course I thought best. I thought I saw a way to real freedom."

"It was Maxendorf!" she exclaimed, under her breath.

He nodded.

"Maxendorf was too clever for me," he confessed. "Perhaps, just at this moment, he is a little sorry for it."

"What do you mean?" she asked hastily.

Maraton shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, he's alive—only just, though! I shook the life nearly out of him. He knows that if we fail within these next twenty-four hours, your uncle and I, I am going to take what's left. I promised him that."

Her eyes glowed.

"You are a strange person," she declared. "How did you come to see the truth—to know that you had been misled by Maxendorf?"

"It was Selingman who told me," he explained. "Selingman, too, was deceived, but Selingman was nearer to him. He discovered the truth and he came to me. It was a matter of two hours ago. I made my way first to Maxendorf. I remembered my promise. I waited about in the corridors outside his room until I saw an opportunity. Then I slipped in and took him by the throat. Oh, he's alive, but not very much alive to-night!"

"Tell me about your wonderful journey north?" she begged.

He shook his head.

"Just at present it is like a nightmare," he replied. "We went from place to place and I preached the new salvation. I told them to trust in me and I would lead them to the light. I believed it. Though the way I knew must be strewn with difficulties, though there were great risks and much suffering, I believed it. I saw the dawn of the millennium. I made them believe that I saw it. They placed their trust in me. I have led them to the brink of God knows what!"

"You have led them to the brink of war," she said gravely. "We wait for its declaration every hour, my uncle and I. They know our plight. They are waiting for the exactly correct minute."

"They may wait a day too long," Maraton muttered. "For myself, I believe that they have already waited a day too long. Maxendorf was too certain. He never dreamed that I might learn the truth. Listen!"

A car stopped outside. They heard the sound of footsteps in the hall, the door was quickly opened. Mr. Foley stood there. He was looking very grave and white, but his eyes flashed at the sight of Maraton.

"You!" he exclaimed.

He gave his coat and hat to the servant; then he closed the door behind him. He remained standing—he offered no form of greeting to his unexpected visitor.

"What do you want?" he demanded. "Why have you come to me?"

"To give you your chance," Maraton replied, with swift emphasis. "You are the only statesman I know who would have courage to accept it. Dare you?"

Mr. Foley remained speechless. He stood perfectly still, with folded arms.

"This isn't an hour for recriminations," Maraton continued. "I have played into Maxendorf's hands—I admit it. There's time to checkmate him. I'll free every railroad in the country to-morrow, and the coal-pits next day, with your help."

"I have forced your delegates to come to me," Mr. Foley answered. "To all my offers they have but one reply: they await your word; they are not seeking for terms."

"Accept mine," Maraton begged, "and I swear to you that they shall consent. Mind, it isn't a small thing, but it's salvation, and it's the only salvation."

"Go on," Mr. Foley commanded.

"Pledge your word," Maraton proceeded deliberately, "pledge me your word that next Session you will nationalise the railways on the basis of three per cent for capital, a minimum wage of two pounds ten, a maximum salary of eight hundred pounds, contracts to be pro rata if profits are not earned. Pledge me that, and the railway strike is over."

"It's Socialism," Elisabeth gasped.

"It's common sense," Mr. Foley declared. "I accept. What about the coal?"

"You don't need to ask me that," Maraton replied swiftly. "Our coalfields are the blood and sinews of the country. They belong to the Government more naturally even than the labour-made railways. Take them. Pay your fair price and take them. Do away with the horde of money-bloated parvenus, who fatten and decay on the immoral profits they drag from Labour. We are at the parting of the ways. We wait for the strong man. Raise your standard, and the battle is already won."

"And you?" Mr. Foley muttered.

"I am your man," Maraton answered.

Mr. Foley held out his hand.

"If you mean it," he said gravely, "we'll get through yet. But are you sure about the others—Ernshaw and his Union men? We've tried all human means, and Ernshaw is like a rock. Dale and Graveling and all the rest have done what they could. Ernshaw remains outside. I thought that I had won the Labour Party. It seems to me, when the trouble came, that they represented nothing."

"They don't," Maraton agreed, "but Ernshaw represents the people, and I represent Ernshaw. He was with me only a little time ago. There won't be a Labour Party any longer. It will be a National Party, and you will make it."

"I am an old man," Mr. Foley murmured slowly, but his eyes kindled as he spoke.

They both laughed at him.

"Young enough to found a new Party," Maraton insisted, "young enough to bring the country into safety once more."

The atmosphere seemed heavily charged with emotion. Elisabeth's eyes were shining. She held out her hands to Maraton, and he kept them reverently in his.

"To-night," he announced, "with Ernshaw's help I start for the north. In a few hours we shall have freed the railway lines. I leave the Press to you, Mr. Foley. I shall go on to the mines."

"And I?" Lady Elisabeth asked. "What is my share? Is there nothing I can do?"

Their eyes met for one long moment.

"When I return," he said quietly, "I will tell you."



CHAPTER XXXVIII

From town to town, travelling for the most part on the platform of an engine, Maraton sped on his splendid mission. It was Ernshaw himself who drove, with the help of an assistant, but as they passed from place to place the veto was lifted. The men in some districts were a little querulous, but at Maraton's coming they were subdued. It was peace, a peace how splendid they were soon to know. By mid-day, trains laden with coal were rushing to several of the Channel ports. Maraton found his task with the miners more difficult, and yet in a way his triumph here was still more complete. He travelled down the backbone of England, preaching peace where war had reigned, promising great things in the name of the new Government. Although he had been absent barely forty-eight hours, it was a new London into which he travelled on his return. The streets were crowded once more with taxicabs, the evening papers were being sold, the shops were all open, the policemen were once more in the streets. Selingman, who had scarcely once left Maraton's side, gazed about him with wonder.

"It is a miracle, this," he declared. "There is no aftermath."

"The people are waiting," Maraton said. "We have given them serious pledges. Their day is to come."

"You believe that Foley will keep his word?" Selingman asked.

"I know that he will," Maraton replied. "As soon as the Bills are drafted, he will go to the country. It will be a new Party—the National Party. Stay and see it, Selingman—a new era in the politics of the world, a very wonderful era. The country is going to be governed for the people that are worth while."

"If one could but live long enough!" Selingman sighed. "All over the universe it comes. Where was it one read of footsteps that sounded amongst the hills like footsteps upon wool? In the night-watches you can hear those footsteps. The world trembles with them."

"And after all," Maraton continued, "the sun of the world's happiness is made up of the happiness of units. Presently we shall have time to think of those things."

"It is true," Selingman said disconsolately. "I find myself rejoicing in the good which is coming to humanity and forgetting personal sorrows. There is that wonderful, that adorable secretary of your—Julia. What should you say to me, my friend Maraton, if I were indeed to rob you of her? For once I am in earnest."

Maraton started for a moment. The idea at first was ludicrous.

"I suppose," he admitted, "I should reconcile myself to the inevitable. Times are going to be different. I dare say that Aaron will be the only secretary I shall need. But will she go? Remember, she is a woman of the people. I think that she will never settle down, even with your splendid work to control. She is less a poet than a humanitarian."

"What am I, man," Selingman retorted, striking himself on the chest, "but a humanitarian? Listen to the wonderful proof—it is not a secretary I require; it is a wife!"

Maraton was staggered.

"Have you told her?"

"What is the use?" Selingman growled. "She is yours, body and soul. You have but to lift up your finger, and she would follow you to the end of the world. I don't idealize women, you know, Maraton, and virtue isn't a fetish with me. But I know that girl. If you hold out your hands, she is yours, but if you withhold them, she is the most virginal creature that ever breathed."

"She is a splendid character," Maraton said softly.

"Why don't you marry her yourself?" Selingman asked abruptly. "How can you look at her, hear her speak, watch her, without wanting to marry her? What are you made of?"

Maraton sighed.

"I am one of the victims, I suppose, of that curious instinct of selection. I care for some one else; I have cared for some one else ever since the first night I set foot in England."

"Then I'll get her," Selingman declared. "In time I'll get her."

They all dined together at the little restaurant on the borders of Soho. Selingman was the giver of the feast and his spirits were both wonderful and infectious. The roar of London was recommencing. Newspapers were being sold on the streets. The strange cruisers seemed mysteriously to have disappeared from the Atlantic. The fleet, imprisoned no longer, was on its way to the North Sea. There was none of the foolish, over-exuberant rejoicing of bibulous jingoism, but a genuine, deep spirit of thankfulness abroad. Men and women were glad but thoughtful. There were new times to come, great promises had been made. There were rumours everywhere of a new political Party. "We pause to-night," Selingman declared, "at the end of the first chapter. Almost I am tempted to linger in this wonderful country—at any rate until the headlines of the next are in type. You go down to the House tonight?" "At nine o'clock," Maraton replied, glancing at the clock.

"Will they remember," Selingman continued thoughtfully, "that you were the Samson who pulled down the pillars, or will they merely hail you as the deliverer? Will they think of that ghostly ride of yours on the locomotive, I wonder, when you tore screaming through the darkness, with the risk of a buffer on the line at every mile; stepped from the engine, grimy, with your breath sucked out of—you by the wind, and the roar of the locomotive still throbbing in your ears—stepped out to deliver your message to the waiting throngs? Magnificent! A subject worthy of me and my prose! I shall write of it, Maraton. I shall sing the glory of it in verse or script, when your fame as a politician of the moment has passed. You will live because of the garland that I shall weave."

Maraton sipped his wine thoughtfully.

"But for your overweening humility, Selingman," he began—

Selingman struck the table with his fist.

"It is a night for rejoicings, this," he thundered. "I will not have my weaknesses exposed. Let us, for to-night, at any rate, see the best in each other. Glance, for instance, at Miss Julia. Admire the exquisite pink of my carnations which she has condescended to wear; see how well they become her."

"I feel like a flower shop," Julia laughed.

"And you look like the spirit of the flowers herself," Selingman declared, "the wonderful Power on the other side of the sun, who draws them out of the ground and touches their petals with colour, shakes perfume into their blossoms and makes this England of yours, in springtime, like a beautiful, sweet-smelling carpet."

"Don't listen to him, Julia," Maraton warned her. "It was only a month ago that he told me that no civilised man should live in this country because of the women and the beer."

"A man changes," Selingman insisted fiercely. "Your beer I will never drink, but Miss Julia knows that she hasn't in the world a slave so abject as I."

Maraton rose to his feet.

"I must go," he announced. "I have to talk with Mr. Foley for a few minutes. You had better come with me, Aaron. Selingman will see Julia back."

They watched him depart. Julia sighed as he passed through the door.

"I can read your thoughts," Selingman said quickly. "You are feeling, are you not, that to-night his leaving us has in it something allegorical. He was made for the storms of life, to fight in them and rejoice in them, and Fate has taken him by the hand and is leading him now towards the quieter places."

"It is not his choice," Julia murmured. "It is destiny."

"Can't you look a little way into the future?" Selingman continued, peering through half-closed eyes into his wine glass. "He represents the only possible link between the only possible political party of this country and the people. He will win for them in twelve months what they might have waited for through many weary years. He will sit in the high places. History will speak well of him. I will wager you half a dozen pairs of gloves that within a week the Daily Oracle will call him the modern Rienzi. And yet, with the end of the struggle, with the end of the fierce fighting, comes something—what is it?—disappointment? We have no right to be disappointed, and yet, somehow, one feels that it is the cold and the storm and the wind which keep the best in us—the fighting best—alive."

Julia's eyes were soft, for a moment, with tears. She, too, was following him a little way into the future.

"They will make a politician of him," she sighed. "So much the better for politics. But there is one thing which I do not think that he will ever forget. So long as he lives he will be a people's man."

Selingman became curiously silent. Soon he paid the bill.

"Will you put me in a cab?" she asked him outside. He shook his head.

"I shall ride home with you."

"It is rather a long way," she reminded him. "I am down at my old rooms again. The house in Russell Square is full of workmen, after the fire." "It does not matter how far," he said simply.

His fit of silence continued. When at last they arrived at their destination, she held out her hand. Again he shook his head.

"I am coming in," he announced.

She hesitated.

"My rooms are very tiny."

"I am coming in," he repeated.

He followed her up the stairs. Her little sitting-room was in darkness. She struck a match and lit the lamp. She would have pulled down the blind, but he checked her.

"No," he objected, "let us stand and look down together upon this wilderness. So!"

They were high up and they looked upon a treeless waste—rows of houses, tall factories, the line of the river beyond, the murky glow westwards.

"Here I can talk to you," he said. "Here it is silent. Soon I go back to my life and my life's work. You, Julia, must go with me."

She drew a little away from him, speechless with a queer sort of surprise, and a little indignant. He held her wrist firmly.

"I am a man who has written much of love," he continued, "of love and life and all the tangled skein of emotions which make of it a complex thing. And yet so few of us know what love is, so few of us know what companionship is, so few of us know the world in which those others dwell. You have looked at me with your great eyes, Julia, and at first you saw nothing but a fat, plain old man, with plenty of conceit and a humour for idle speeches. And today you think a little differently, and as the days go on you will think more differently still, for I am going to take you with me, Julia, and I am going to keep you with me, and I am going to keep the light in your eyes and the laughter at your lips, in the only way that counts. You will sit with me in my study, you shall see my work come and hear it grow. I shall take you into the world where the music is born, and your eyes will be closed there, and you will only know that there is another soul there who is your guide, and in whom you trust, and for whom you have a strange feeling. That is how love comes, Julia—the only sort of love which lasts. It isn't born in this land, it doesn't even flourish in this universe. If you don't come up in the clouds to find it, it isn't the sort that lasts. You are going to find it with me, dear."

She had begun to tremble a little, the tears were in her eyes.

"Oh, I know!" he faltered, with a break in his own voice. "But you'll leave your sorrows behind in my world."

It was midnight when Maraton left the House. He came out with Mr. Foley, and they stood for a moment at the entrance. An electric coupe rolled swiftly up.

"You must come home with me for a minute or two, Maraton," Mr. Foley urged. "It is on your way."

The coupe, however, was already occupied. Elisabeth leaned out of the window. She held the door open.

"I am going to take Mr. Maraton back with me," she insisted. "The car is there for you, uncle."

Mr. Foley smiled.

"Quite right," he assented. "Get in, Maraton. I shall be home before you."

Maraton obeyed, and they glided out of the Palace yard.

"I was there all the time," Elisabeth told him quietly. "I heard everything. I was so glad, so proud. Even your Labour Members had to come and shake hands with you."

"I don't think Mr. Dale liked it," he remarked, smiling. "They are not bad fellows at heart, but they've got the poison in their systems which seems, somehow or other, to become part of the equipment of the politician—self-interest, over-egotism, contraction of interest. It makes one almost afraid."

She leaned a little towards him.

"You will not fear anything," she whispered confidently. "To-night, as I looked down, it seemed to me that as a looker-on I saw more, perhaps, of the real significance of it all than you who were there. It is a new force, you know, which has come into politics, a new Party. I suppose historians will call to-night, the fusion of Parties which is going to happen, an extraordinary triumph for Mr. Foley. Perhaps he deserves it—in my heart I believe that he does—but not in the way they would try to make out."

"His heart is right," Maraton declared. "He has wide sympathies and splendid understanding."

"It is a new chapter which begins to-night," she repeated. "You will have many disappointments to face, both of you."

"But isn't it a glorious fight!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "A great cause at one's back, a future filled with magnificent possibilities! Lady Elisabeth," he went on, "you can't imagine what this hour means. Sometimes I have had moments of horrible depression. It is so easy to feel the sorrows of the people in one's heart, so easy to stir them into a passionate apprehension of their position. And then comes the dull, sickening doubt whether, after all, it had not been better to leave them as they were. Of what use are words—that is what I have felt so often. And now there has come the power to do great things for them. Life couldn't hold anything more splendid."

Her hand touched his. She had withdrawn her glove.

"You will let me help?" she begged.

He turned towards her then, and she saw the light in his face for which she had longed. With a little cry her head sank upon his shoulder, and his arms closed around her.

"I am almost jealous of the people," she murmured. "Only I want you to teach me to love them and feel for them as you do. I want to feel that the same thing in our lives is bringing us always closer together."



THE END