t for me. Be off with you, or I'll call a policeman!"

He shouldered his way across the pavement, and Julia followed him. Soon
they found a seat in the shade of the trees. She leaned back with a
little sigh of content.

"Five minutes!" she begged. "Just five minutes!"

He glanced at his watch, relit his pipe, and relapsed once more into
sombre silence. Julia's thoughts went flitting away. She closed her
eyes and leaned back. She had only one fear now. Would he find out!
He was thick enough, in his way, but he was no fool, and he was already
coarsely jealous.

"Ten minutes you've had," he announced at last. "Look here, Julia, I've
brought you out to ask you a plain question. Are you going to marry me
or are you not?"

"I am not," she answered steadily.

He had been so certain of her reply that his face betrayed no
disappointment. Only he turned a little in his chair so that he could
watch her face. She was conscious of the cruelty of his action.

"Then I want to know what you are going to do," he continued. "You are
thin and white and worn out. You're fit for something better than a
tailoress and you know it. And you're killing yourself at it. You're
losing your health, and with your health you're losing your power of
doing any work worth a snap of the fingers."

"It isn't so bad, except this very hot weather," she protested. "Then
I'm secretary to the Guild, you know. I can do my work so much better
when I'm really one of themselves. Besides, they always listen to me at
the meetings, because I come straight from the benches."

"You've done your whack," he declared. "No need to go on any longer,
and you know it. I can make a little home for you right up in
Hampstead, and you can go on with your writing and lecturing and give up
this slavery. You know you were thinking of it a short time back.
You've no one to consider but yourself. You're half promised to me and
I want you."

"I am sorry, Richard," she said, "if I have ever misled you, but I hope
that from now onward, at any rate, there need be no shadow of
misunderstanding. I do not intend to marry. My work is the greatest
thing in life to me, and I can continue it better unmarried."

"It's the first time you've talked like this," he persisted. "Amy
Chatterton, Rachael Weiss, and most of 'em are married. They stick at
it all right, don't they? What's the matter with your doing the same?"

"Different people have different ideas," she pronounced. "Please be