Maraton glanced out of the window.  There was a hurrying crowd fast approaching the front of the hotel.  He drew back.

“I was just on the point of asking Aaron,” he remarked, “exactly what it is that is expected from me to-night.  Tell me what is in your mind?”

Her face lit up as she looked at him.

“We are like children,” she replied, “all of us.  We have too much faith.  I think that what we are expecting is a miracle.”

“Is it wise?” Maraton asked quietly.  “Don’t you think that it may lead to disappointment?”

She considered the thought for a moment and brushed it away.

“We are not afraid, Aaron and I.”

“You are belligerents, both of you.”

“And so are you,” Julia retorted swiftly.  “What was it you said in Chicago about the phrase-makers?—­the Socialism that flourished in the study while women and children starved in the streets?  Those are the sort of things that we remember, Aaron and I.”

“This is a country of slow progress,” Maraton reminded them.  “One builds stone by stone.  Listen to me carefully, you two.  Since you have had understanding, your eyes have been fixed upon this one immense problem.  I have a question to ask you concerning it.  Shall I destroy for the sake of the unborn generations, or shall I use all my cunning and the power of the people to lead them a little further into the light during their living days?  What would they say themselves, do you think?  Would one in a hundred be content to sacrifice himself for a principle?”

“Who knows that the millennium would be so long delayed?” Julia exclaimed.  “A few years might see Society reconstituted, with new laws and a new humanity.”

Maraton shook his head.

“Don’t make any mistake about that,” he said.  “If I press the levers upon which to-day my hand seems to rest, this country will be laid waste with famine and riot and conquest.  An hour ago a little man was here, a little, black-bearded man with a quiet voice, charged with a great mission.  He came to offer me, on behalf of a syndicate of foreign manufacturers, a million pounds towards our universal strike.”

They both gasped.  The thing was surely incredible!

“An incident like that,” Maraton continued, “may show you what this country must lose, for her rivals do not give away a million pounds for nothing.”

Julia’s eyes were fixed upon his.  Her face was full of strained anxiety.

“You talk,” she murmured, “as though you had doubts, as though you were hesitating.  Forgive me—­we have waited so long for to-day—­we and all the others.”

“Could any one,” he demanded, “stand in the position I stand in to-day and not have doubts?”

Her eyes flashed at him.

“Yes,” she cried, “a prophet could!  A real man could—­the man we thought you were, could!”

Aaron leaned forward, aghast.  His monosyllable was charged with terrified reproach.