She remained quite motionless during his brief pause.  One hand had moved from before her face and had gripped his.

“There’s our work, you know, Julia,” he went on.  “There isn’t anything in the world must interfere with that.  We can’t divide our lives, can we?  We ought not to want to.  If I could make you understand—­can I, I wonder?—­how splendid it is to have some one here by my side who understands.  It seems to me that I am going to be a little lonely.  I shall have to stand on my own feet a good deal.  I rely so much upon you, Julia.  You are a woman, aren’t you—­I mean a real woman?  I need you.”

Very slowly she raised her head.  Her eyes met his freely.  There was something of the childlike adoration of an instinctive and triumphant purity in the smile which parted her lips.  Maraton understood at once that the danger was past.  The thunder had left the air.

“You know that I am your slave,” she murmured.  “Don’t be afraid that I am becoming neurotic.  You see, this was all a little new to me, and for a moment I felt that I wanted to go and hide myself.  That has all passed now.  I am not even ashamed.  I suppose one gets terrified with receiving so much, and wants to give.  It’s a very natural feminine impulse, isn’t it?  And I shall give—­my fingers, my brain—­all I possess.”

She rose suddenly to her feet and glanced at the clock.

“What a day you must have had!” she exclaimed.  “You are not going to look at my Sheffield figures, even, before the morning.  Oh, you’ll be surprised when you see them!  You’ve a wonderful case.  Some of the fortunes that have been made there—­that are being made there now—­are barbaric.  I mustn’t talk about it, or I shall get angry.  Listen, there’s Aaron.”

They heard the sound of his latch-key.  A moment later he entered the room.  He looked anxiously at Maraton; Julia he scarcely noticed.

“I took him home,” he announced.  “He never spoke a word the whole way; seemed stupid.  I shouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t got a little concussion.

“Did you send for a doctor?” Maraton asked.

“His landlady was going to do that,” Aaron continued.  “It was all I could do to sit in the cab by his side.  I wish—­yes, I almost wish that he’d never got up from that carpet.”

“Thanks,” Maraton replied.  “I didn’t come over here to fill the inside of an English prison!”

“Prison!”

Aaron’s expression of contempt was sublime.

“There’s nothing they could have done to you, sir.  All the same, I only wish that your blow had killed him.”

“Why?”

Aaron dropped his voice for a minute.

“Because wherever we go or move,” he said, “there will always be the snake in the grass.  He will be filled forever with a poisonous hatred for you.  He will never dare to raise his hand against you to your face—­he isn’t that sort of man—­but he’ll have his stab before he’s finished.  He was born a sneak.”