Marcella went into the back kitchen and called Minta.  While the boiling water was brought and the tea was made, Wharton sat forward with his face on his hands and saw nothing.  Marcella whispered a word in Minta’s ear as she came in.  The woman paused, looked at Wharton, whom she had not recognised before in the dark—­grew pale—­and Marcella saw her hands shaking as she set the tray in order.  Wharton knew nothing and thought nothing of Kurd’s widow, but to Marcella the juxtaposition of the two figures brought a wave of complex emotion.

Wharton forced himself to eat and drink, hardly speaking the while.  Then, when the tremor of sheer exhaustion had to some extent abated, he suddenly realised who this was that was sitting opposite to him ministering to him.

She felt his hand—­his quick powerful hand—­on hers.

“To you I owe the whole truth—­let me tell it!”

She drew herself away instinctively—­but so softly that he did not realise it.  He threw himself back once more in the chair beside her—­one knee over the other, the curly head so much younger to-night than the face beneath it supported on his arms, his eyes closed again for rest—­and plunged into the story of the Clarion.

It was admirably told.  He had probably so rehearsed it to himself several times already.  He described his action as the result of a double influence working upon him—­the influence of his own debts and necessities, and the influence of his growing conviction that the maintenance of the strike had become a blunder, even a misfortune for the people themselves.

“Then—­just as I was at my wit’s end, conscious besides that the paper was on a wrong line, and must somehow be got out of it—­came the overtures from the Syndicate.  I knew perfectly well I ought to have refused them—­of course my whole career was risked by listening to them.  But at the same time they gave me assurances that the workpeople would ultimately gain—­they proved to me that I was helping to extinguish the trade.  As to the money—­when a great company has to be launched, the people who help it into being get paid for it—­it is invariable—­it happens every day.  I like the system no more than you may do—­or Wilkins.  But consider.  I was in such straits that bankruptcy lay between me and my political future.  Moreover—­I had lost nerve, sleep, balance.  I was scarcely master of myself when Pearson first broached the matter to me—­”

“Pearson!” cried Marcella, involuntarily.  She recalled the figure of the solicitor; had heard his name from Frank Leven.  She remembered Wharton’s impatient words—­“There is a tiresome man wants to speak to me on business—­”

It was then I—­that evening!  Something sickened her.

Wharton raised himself in his chair and looked at her attentively with his young haggard eyes.  In the faint lamplight she was a pale vision of the purest and noblest beauty.  But the lofty sadness of her face filled him with a kind of terror.  Desire—­impotent pain—­violent resolve, swept across him.  He had come to her, straight from the scene of his ruin, as to the last bulwark left him against a world bent on his destruction, and bare henceforward of all delights.