Maraton turned once more to the window, raised the curtain, and gazed out into the darkness.  There was a little movement at the end of the street.  The police had driven back the crowd to allow a carriage to pass through.  A hoarse murmur of voices came floating into the room.  The people gave way slowly and unwillingly—­still, they gave way.  Law and order, strenuous though the task of preserving them was becoming, prevailed.

“Mr. Foley,” Maraton said, dropping the curtain and returning once more to his place, “I am honoured by your confidence.  You force me, however, to remind you that you have spoken to me as a politician.  I am not a politician.  The cause of the people is above politics.”

“I am for the people,” Mr. Foley declared, with a sudden passion in his tone.  “It is their own fault, the blind prejudice of their ignorant leaders, if they fail to recognise it.”

“For the people,” Maraton repeated softly.

“Haven’t my Government done their best to prove it?” the Prime Minister demanded, almost fiercely.  “We have passed at least six measures which a dozen years ago would have been reckoned rank Socialism.  What we do need to-day is a people’s man in our Government.  I admit our weakness.  I admit that with every desire to do the right thing, we may sometimes err through lack of knowledge.  Our great trouble is this; there is not to-day a single man amongst the Labour Party, a single man who has come into Parliament on the mandate of the people, whose assistance would be of the slightest service to us.  I make you an offer which you yourself must consider a wonderful one.  You come to this country as an enemy, and I offer you my hand as a friend.  I offer you not only a seat in Parliament but a share in the counsels of my party.  I ask you to teach us how to legislate for the people of the future.”

Maraton remained for a moment silent.  His face betrayed no exultation.  His tone, when at last he spoke, was almost sad.

“Mr. Foley,” he said, “if you are not a great man, you have in you, at least, the elements of greatness.  You have imagination.  You know how to meet a crisis.  I only wish that what you suggest were possible.  Twenty years ago, perhaps, yes.  To-day I fear that the time for any legislation in which you would concur, is past.”

“What have you to hope for but legislation?” Mr. Foley asked.  “What else is there but civil war?”

Maraton smiled a little grimly.

“There is what in your heart you are fearing all the time,” he replied.  “There is the slow paralysis of all your manufactures, the stoppage of your railways, the dislocation of every industry and undertaking built upon the slavery of the people.  What about your British Empire then?”

Mr. Foley regarded his visitor with quiet dignity.

“I have understood that you were an Englishman, Mr. Maraton,” he said.  “Am I to look upon you as a traitor?”