cigarette and began to pace the room--his customary manner of
preparing himself for the creative mood. After a while he began to
dictate--but haltingly. He had come here from Antonelli all primed with
fervour and indignation, but it was evident that this feeling had ebbed,
that his mind refused to concentrate on what he was saying. Despite the
magnificent opportunity to flay the capitalists which their most recent
tactics afforded him, he paused, repeated himself, and began again,
glancing from time to time reproachfully, almost resentfully at Janet.
Usually, on these occasions, he was transported, almost inebriated by his
own eloquence; but now he chafed at her listlessness, he was at a loss to
account for the withdrawal of the enthusiasm he had formerly been able to
arouse. Lacking the feminine stimulus, his genius limped. For Rolfe there
had been a woman in every strike--sometimes two. What had happened,
during his absence, to alienate the most promising of all neophytes he
had ever encountered?

"The eyes of the world are fixed on the workers of Hampton! They must be
true to the trust their fellows have placed in them! To-day the
mill-owners, the masters, are at the end of their tether. Always
unscrupulous, they have descended to the most despicable of tactics in
order to deceive the public. But truth will prevail!..." Rolfe lit
another cigarette, began a new sentence and broke it off. Suddenly he
stood over her. "It's you!" he said. "You don't feel it, you don't help
me, you're not in sympathy."

He bent over her, his red lips gleaming through his beard, a terrible
hunger in his lustrous eyes--the eyes of a soul to which self-denial was
unknown. His voice was thick with uncontrolled passion, his hand was
cold.

"Janet, what has happened? I love you, you must love me--I cannot believe
that you do not. Come with me. We shall work together for the workers--it
is all nothing without you."

For a moment she sat still, and then a pain shot through her, a pain as
sharp as a dagger thrust. She drew her hand away.

"I can't love--I can only hate," she said.

"But you do not hate me!" Rolfe repudiated so gross a fact. His voice
caught as in a sob. "I, who love you, who have taught you!"

She dismissed this--what he had taught her--with a gesture which, though
slight, was all-expressive. He drew back from her.

"Shall I tell you who has planned and carried out this plot?" he cried.
"It is Ditmar. He is the one, and h