and the man with nervous anxiety, the
official with a flicker of interest Aaron Thurnbrein drew a little sigh.
The bicycle bad been earned by years of strenuous toil. It was almost a
necessity of his existence.

"Aaron's bicycle," David Ross muttered. "No, no! That must not be.
Let us go to the streets."

But the woman did not move. Already the young man had wheeled it into
the shop.

"Take it," he insisted. "What does it matter? Maraton is here!"

Away again, this time on foot, along the sun-baked pavements, through
courts and alleys into a narrow, busy street in the neighbourhood of
Shoreditch. He stopped at last before a factory and looked tentatively
up at the windows. Through the opened panes came the constant click of
sewing machines, the smell of cloth, the vision of many heads bent over
their work. He stood where he was for a time and watched. The place
was like a hive of industry. Row after row of girls were there, seated
side by side, round-shouldered, bending over their machines, looking
neither to the right nor to the left, struggling to keep up to time to
make sure of the wage which was life or death to them. It was nothing
to them that above the halo of smoke the sky was blue; or that away
beyond the murky horizon, the sun, which here in the narrow street
seemed to have drawn all life from the air, was shining on yellow
cornfields bending before the west wind. Here there was simply an
intolerable heat, a smell of fish and a smell of cloth.

Aaron Thurnbrein crossed the street, entered the unimposing doorway and
knocked at the door which led into the busy but unassuming offices. A
small boy threw open a little glass window and looked at him doubtfully.

"I don't know that you can see Miss Thurnbrein even for a minute," he
declared, in answer to Aaron's confident enquiry. "It's our busiest
time. What do you want?"

"I am her brother," Aaron announced. "It is most important."

The boy slipped from a worn stool and disappeared. Presently the door
of the little waiting-room was suddenly opened, and a girl entered.

"Aaron!" she exclaimed. "Has anything happened?"

Once more he raised his head, once more the light that flickered in his
face transformed him into some semblance of a virile man.

"Maraton is here! Maraton has arrived!"

The light flashed, too, for a moment in her face, only she, even before
it came, was beautiful.

"At last!" she cried. "At last! Have you seen him, Aaron? Tell me
qu