“You little devil!” he said.  “You cold little devil!”

“I don’t love you.  That’s all.  I think now that I never did.”

“You pretended damned well.”

“Don’t you think you’d better go?” Lily said wearily.  “I don’t like to hurt you.  I am to blame for a great deal.  But there is no use going on, is there?  I’ll give you your freedom as soon as I can.  You will want that, of course.”

“My freedom!  Do you think I am going to let you go like that?  I’ll fight you and your family in every court in the country before I give you up.  You can’t bring Edith Boyd up against me, either.  If she does that I’ll bring up other witnesses, other men, and she knows it.”

Lily was very pale, but still calm.  She made a movement toward the bell, but he caught her hand before she could ring it.

“I’ll get your Willy Cameron, too,” he said, his face distorted with anger.  “I’ll get him good.  You’ve done a bad thing for your friends and your family to-day, Lily.  I’ll go the limit on getting back at them.  I’ve got the power, and by God, I’ll use it.”

He flung out into the hall, and toward the door.  There he encountered Grayson, who reminded him of his hat and gloves, or he would have gone without them.

Grayson, going into the library a moment later, found Lily standing there, staring ahead and trembling violently.  He brought her a cup of tea, and stood by, his old face working, while she drank it.

CHAPTER XXXVII

The strike had apparently settled down to the ordinary run of strikes.  The newspaper men from New York were gradually recalled, as the mill towns became orderly, and no further acts of violence took place.  Here and there mills that had gone down fired their furnaces again and went back to work, many with depleted shifts, however.

But the strikers had lost, and knew it.  Howard Cardew, facing the situation with his customary honesty, saw in the gradual return of the men to work only the urgency of providing for their families, and realized that it was not peace that was coming, but an armed neutrality.  The Cardew Mills were still down, but by winter he was confident they would be open again.  To what purpose?  To more wrangling and bickering, more strikes?  Where was the middle ground?  He was willing to give the men a percentage of the profits they made.  He did not want great wealth, only an honest return for his invested capital.  But he wanted to manage his own business.  It was his risk.

The coal miners were going out.  The Cardews owned coal mines.  The miners wanted to work a minimum day for a maximum wage, but the country must have coal.  Shorter hours meant more men for the mines, and they would have to be imported.  But labor resented the importation of foreign workers.

Again, what was the answer?