relentless force, he would never have penetrated even as far
as the stuffy room where the unique Bradshaw lay. It was she who had
taken him to the station, not he her. How could he hold her back from
Brighton?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

When they came again to the Blood Tub, she said--

"Couldn't we just go and look in? I've got plenty of time, now I know
exactly how I stand."

She halted, and glanced across the road. He could only agree to the
proposition. For himself, a peculiar sense of delicacy would have made
it impossible for him to intrude his prosperity upon the deliberations
of starving artisans on strike and stricken; and he wondered what the
potters might think or say about the invasion by a woman. But he had to
traverse the street with her and enter, and he had to do so with an air
of masculine protectiveness. The urchins stood apart to let them in.

Snaggs', dimly lit by a few glazed apertures in the roof, was nearly
crammed by men who sat on the low benches and leaned standing against
the sidewalls. In the small and tawdry proscenium, behind a worn
picture of the Bay of Naples, were silhouetted the figures of the men's
leader and of several other officials. The leader was speaking in a
quiet, mild voice, the other officials were seated on Windsor chairs.
The smell of the place was nauseating, and yet the atmosphere was
bitingly cold. The warm-wrapped visitors could see rows and rows of
discoloured backs and elbows, and caps, and stringy kerchiefs. They
could almost feel the contraction of thousands of muscles in an
involuntary effort to squeeze out the chill from all these bodies; not a
score of overcoats could be discerned in the whole theatre, and many of
the jackets were thin and ragged; but the officials had overcoats. And
the visitors could almost see, as it were in rays, the intense fixed
glances darting from every part of the interior, and piercing the
upright figure in the centre of the stage.

"Some method of compromise," the leader was saying in his persuasive
tones.

A young man sprang up furiously from the middle benches.

"To hell wi' compromise!" he shouted in a tigerish passion. "Haven't us
had forty pound from Ameriky?"

"Order! Order!" some protested fiercely. But one voice cried: "Pitch
the bastard awt, neck and crop!"

Hands clawed at the interrupter and dragged him with extreme violence to
the level of