They stood together at the corner of Blackfriars Bridge.

“Well,” Maraton said, “I have done your bidding.  I have been here before many times, and I have been here in the winter.”

“Tell me,” she asked, “there is a girl there on that third seat, crying.  Am I doing wrong if I go to her and give her money for a night’s lodging?”

“Without a doubt,” he answered.  “And yet, I expect you’ll do it.  Principles are splendid—­in the abnegation.  If we are to be illogical, let me be the breaker of my own laws.”

He thrust some money into her hand and Julia disappeared.  For some time she remained talking with the figure upon the seat.  Aaron and Maraton leaned over the corner of the bridge and looked down the curving arc of lights towards the Houses of Parliament.

“I shall end there, you know, Aaron,” Maraton sighed.  “I am not looking forward to it.  It’s a queer sort of a hothouse for a man.”

“I wonder,” Aaron murmured thoughtfully.  “I used to think of you travelling from one to the other of the great cities, and I used to think that when you had spoken to them, the people would see the truth and rise and take their own.  I used to be very fond of the Old Testament once,” he went on, his voice sinking a little lower.  “Life was so simple in those days, and the words of a prophet seemed greater than any laws.”

“And nowadays,” Maraton continued, “life has become like a huge and complex piece of machinery.  Humanity has given way to mechanics.  Aaron, I don’t believe I can help this people by any other way save by laws.”

They both turned quickly around.  Julia was standing by their side, and with her the girl.

“I told her,” Julia explained, “that it was not my money I was offering, but the money of a gentleman who was the greatest friend the poor people of the world have ever known.  She wanted to speak to you.”

The girl drew her shawl a little closer around her shoulders.  Her face bore upon it the terrible stamp of suffering, without its redeeming purification.  Save for her abundant hair, her very sex would have been unrecognisable.  She looked steadily at Maraton.

“You sent me money,” she said.

“I did,” he admitted.

“Are you one of those soft-hearted fools who go about doing this sort of thing?” she demanded.

“I am not,” he replied.  “I object to giving money away.  I am sorry to see people suffering, but as a rule I think that it is their own fault if they come to the straits that you are in.  I sent the money to please this young lady.”

“Their own fault, eh?” she muttered.

“I qualify that,” he added quickly.  “Their own fault because they submit to a heritage of unjust laws.  It is your own fault because you don’t join together and smash the laws.  You would fill the jails, perhaps, but you’d make it easier for those who came after.”

She stood quite silent for a moment.  When she spoke, the truculent note had departed from her tone.