“Ten minutes you’ve had,” he announced at last.  “Look here, Julia, I’ve brought you out to ask you a plain question.  Are you going to marry me or are you not?”

“I am not,” she answered steadily.

He had been so certain of her reply that his face betrayed no disappointment.  Only he turned a little in his chair so that he could watch her face.  She was conscious of the cruelty of his action.

“Then I want to know what you are going to do,” he continued.  “You are thin and white and worn out.  You’re fit for something better than a tailoress and you know it.  And you’re killing yourself at it.  You’re losing your health, and with your health you’re losing your power of doing any work worth a snap of the fingers.”

“It isn’t so bad, except this very hot weather,” she protested.  “Then I’m secretary to the Guild, you know.  I can do my work so much better when I’m really one of themselves.  Besides, they always listen to me at the meetings, because I come straight from the benches.”

“You’ve done your whack,” he declared.  “No need to go on any longer, and you know it.  I can make a little home for you right up in Hampstead, and you can go on with your writing and lecturing and give up this slavery.  You know you were thinking of it a short time back.  You’ve no one to consider but yourself.  You’re half promised to me and I want you.”

“I am sorry, Richard,” she said, “if I have ever misled you, but I hope that from now onward, at any rate, there need be no shadow of misunderstanding.  I do not intend to marry.  My work is the greatest thing in life to me, and I can continue it better unmarried.”

“It’s the first time you’ve talked like this,” he persisted.  “Amy Chatterton, Rachael Weiss, and most of ’em are married.  They stick at it all right, don’t they?  What’s the matter with your doing the same?”

“Different people have different ideas,” she pronounced.  “Please be my friend, Richard, and do not worry me about this.  You can easily find some one else.  There are any number of girls, I’m sure, who’d be proud to be your wife.  As for me, it is impossible.”

“And why is it impossible?” he demanded, in a portentous tone.

“Because I do not care for you in that way,” she answered, “and because I have no desire to marry at all.”

He smoked sullenly at his pipe for several moments.  All the time his eyes were filled with smouldering malevolence.

“Now I am going to begin to talk,” he said.  “Don’t look as though you were going to run away, because you’re not.  I am going to talk to you about that fellow Maraton.”

“Why do you mention his name?” she asked, stiffening.  “What has he to do with it?”

“A good deal, to my thinking,” was the grim reply.  “It’s my belief that you’ve a fancy for him, and that’s why you’ve turned against me.”

“You’ve no right to say anything of the sort!” she exclaimed.