But he sat up to answer her, and could not get free from an inward pleading or wrestle with her, which haunted him through all the intervals of these rapid days.

Life while they lasted was indeed a gymnast’s contest of breath and endurance.  The Clarion made its retreat in Wharton’s finest style, and the fact rang through labouring England.  The strike-leaders came up from the Midlands; Wharton had to see them.  He was hotly attacked in the House privately, and even publicly by certain of his colleagues.  Bennett showed concern and annoyance.  Meanwhile the Conservative papers talked the usual employers’ political economy; and the Liberal papers, whose support of the strike had been throughout perfunctory, and of no particular use to themselves or to other people, took a lead they were glad to get, and went in strongly for the award.

Through it all Wharton showed extraordinary skill.  The columns of the Clarion teemed with sympathetic appeals to the strikers, flanked by long statements of “hard fact”—­the details of foreign competition and the rest, the plans of the masters—­freely supplied him by Mr. Pearson.  With Bennett and his colleagues in the House he took a bold line; admitted that he had endangered his popularity both inside Parliament and out of it at a particularly critical moment; and implied, though he did not say, that some men were still capable of doing independent things to their own hurt.  Meanwhile he pushed a number of other matters to the front, both in the paper and in his own daily doings.  He made at least two important speeches in the provinces, in the course of these days, on the Bill before the House of Lords; he asked questions in Parliament on the subject of the wages paid to Government employes; and he opened an attack on the report of a certain Conservative Commission which had been rousing the particular indignation of a large mass of South London working men.

At the end of ten days the strike was over; the workers, sullen and enraged, had submitted, and the plans of the Syndicate were in all the papers.  Wharton, looking round him, realised to his own amazement that his political position had rather gained than suffered.  The general impression produced by his action had been on the whole that of a man strong enough to take a line of his own, even at the risk of unpopularity.  There was a new tone of respect among his opponents, and, resentful as some of the Labour members were, Wharton did not believe that what he had done would ultimately damage his chances on the 10th at all.  He had vindicated his importance, and he held his head high, adopting towards his chances of the leadership a strong and careless tone that served him well.

Meanwhile there were, of course, clever people behind the scenes who looked on and laughed.  But they held their tongues, and Wharton, who had carefully avoided the mention of names during the negotiations with Pearson, did his best to forget them.  He felt uncomfortable, indeed, when he passed the portly Denny in the House or in the street.  Denny had a way of looking at the member for West Brookshire out of the corner of a small, slit-like eye.  He did it more than usual during these days, and Wharton had only to say to himself that for all things there is a price—­which the gods exact.