oyed her; he had even drawn her disdain, by his lack of initiative
and male force in the incident of the senile Sunday School teacher. He
had profoundly disappointed her. Now, she simply forgot this; the
sinister impression vanished from her mind. She recalled her first
vision of him in the lighted doorway of his father's shop. Her present
vision confirmed that sympathetic vision. She liked the feel of his
faithful hand, and the glance of his timid and yet bellicose eye. And
she reposed on his very apparent honesty as on a bed. She knew, with the
assurance of perfect faith, that he had nothing dubious to conceal, and
that no test could strain his magnanimity. And, while she so reflected,
she was thinking, too, of Janet's fine dress, and her elegance and
jewels, and wishing that she had changed the old black frock in which
she travelled. The perception that she could never be like Janet cast
her down. But, the next moment, she was saying to herself proudly: "What
does it matter? Why should I be like Janet?" And, the next moment after
that, she was saying, in another phase of her pride: "I _will_ be like
Janet!"

They began to discuss the strike. It was a topic which, during those
weeks, could not be avoided, either by the rich or by the poor.

"I suppose you're like all the rest--against the men?" she challenged
him again, inviting battle.

He replied bluntly: "What earthly right have you to suppose that I'm
like all the rest?"

She bent her head lower, so that she could only see him through the veil
of her eyelashes.

"I'm very sorry," she said, in a low, smiling, meditative voice. "I knew
all the time you weren't."

The thought shot through her mind like a lance: "It is incredible, and
horribly dangerous, that I should be sitting here with him, after all
that has happened to me, and him without the slightest suspicion!... And
yet what can stop it from coming out, sooner or later? Nothing can stop
it."

Edwin Clayhanger continued to talk of the strike, and she heard him
saying: "If you ask me, I'll tell you what I think--workmen on strike
are always in the right... you've only got to look at them in a crowd
together. They don't starve themselves for fun."

What he said thrilled her. There was nothing in it, but there was
everything in it. His generosity towards the oppressed was everything to
her. His whole attitude was utterly and mysteriously different from that
of any other man whom she had known.... And wi