“They are saying that you are to be bought, that that is why you are here, that Mr. Foley will pay a great price for you.  They are saying that all those hopes we had built upon your coming, are to be dashed away.  They say that you are for the flesh-pots.  I daren’t breathe a word of this to Aaron,” she added hurriedly, “or I think that he would go mad.  He is blind with passionate love for you.  He does not see the danger, he will not believe that you are not as a god.”

Maraton looked past her into the gardens, away into the violet sky.  The nightingale was singing now clearly and wonderfully.  Perhaps, for a moment, his thoughts strayed from the great battle of life.  Perhaps his innate sense and worship of beauty, the artist in the man, which was the real thing making him great in his daily work, triumphed apart from any other consideration.  The music of life was in his veins.  Soft and stately, Elisabeth, standing a little apart, was looking in upon them, an exquisite figure with a background of dark green trees.

“When you faced death in Chicago,” Julia went on, her voice quivering with the effort she was making to keep it low, “when you offered your body to the law and preached fire and murder with your lips, you did it for the sake of the people.  There was nothing in life so glorious to you, then, as the one great cause.  That was the man we hoped to see.  Are you that man?”

Maraton’s thoughts came back.  He moved a little towards her.  Her hand shot out as though to keep him at a distance.

“Are you that man?” she repeated.

Her thin form was shaken with stifled sobs.

“I hope so,” he answered gravely.  “My ways are not the ways to which you have been accustomed.  In my heart I believe that I see further into the real truth than some of those very ignorant friends of yours who have been sent into Parliament by the operatives they represent; further even than you, Julia, handicapped by your sex, with your eyes fixed, day by day, only upon the misery of life.  You blame me because I am here amongst these people as an equal.  Listen.  Is one responsible for their birth and instincts?  I tell you now what I have told to no one, for no one has ever ventured to ask me twice of my parentage.  I was born, in a sense, as these people were born.  I cannot help it if, finding it advisable to come amongst them, I find their ways easy.  That is all.  I came here to keep a promise to a man who is, in his way, a great statesman.  He is Prime Minister of our country.  He has, without a doubt, so far as it is possible for such a man to have it there at all, the cause of the people at his heart.  Is it for me to ignore him, to leave what he would say to me unsaid, to pull down the pillars which have kept this a proud country for many hundreds of years, without even listening?  Remember that if I speak at Manchester the things that are in my heart, this country, for your time and mine, must perish.  Of that I am sure.  That has been made clear to me.  Do you wonder, Julia, that, before I take that last step, I lift every stone, I turn over every page, I listen to every word which may be spoken by those who have the right to speak?  That is why I am here.  On Monday morning I leave.  On Monday night I speak to the people in Manchester.”