my
friend, Richard, and do not worry me about this. You can easily find
some one else. There are any number of girls, I'm sure, who'd be proud
to be your wife. As for me, it is impossible."

"And why is it impossible?" he demanded, in a portentous tone.

"Because I do not care for you in that way," she answered, "and because
I have no desire to marry at all."

He smoked sullenly at his pipe for several moments. All the time his
eyes were filled with smouldering malevolence.

"Now I am going to begin to talk," he said. "Don't look as though you
were going to run away, because you're not. I am going to talk to you
about that fellow Maraton."

"Why do you mention his name?" she asked, stiffening. "What has he to
do with it?"

"A good deal, to my thinking," was the grim reply. "It's my belief that
you've a fancy for him, and that's why you've turned against me."

"You've no right to say anything of the sort!" she exclaimed.

"And, by God, why haven't I?" he insisted, striking his knee with his
clenched fist. "Haven't you been my girl for six years before he came?
You were kind of shy, but you'd have been mine in the end, and you know
it. Waiting was all I had to do, and I was content to wait. And now
he's come along, and I know very well that I haven't a dog's chance.
You're a working lass, Julia, fit mate for a working man. Do you think
he's one of our sort? Not he! Do you think he's for marrying a girl
who works for her bread? If you do, you're a bigger fool than I think
you. He's forever nosing around amongst these swell ladies and
gentlemen with handles to their names, ladies and gentlemen who live on
the other side of the earth to us. He can talk like a prophet, I grant
you, but that's all there is of the prophet about him. People's man,
indeed! He'll be the people's man so long as it pays him and not a
second longer."

"Have you finished?" she asked quietly.

"No, nor never shall have finished," he continued, raising his voice,
"while he's playing the rotten game he's at now, and you're mooning
around after him as though he were a god. I'll never stop speaking
until I've knocked the bottom out of that, Julia. You never used to
think anything of fine clothes and all these gentlemen's tricks, it's
all come of a sudden."

"Have you finished?" she asked again.

"Never in this life!" he replied fiercely. "I tell you he shan't have
you, and you shan't have him. I'm there between, and I'm not to be got
rid of