no time in obtaining a force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike.  Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been the day before.  It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard it, could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was determined to starve and crush if they dared to upset his plans and oppose his will were human beings with wills and passions and grievances of their own.  Until to-day her eyes had been sealed.  In agony they had been opened to the panorama of sorrow and suffering, of passion and evil; and what she beheld now as life was a vast and terrible cruelty.  She had needed only this final proof to be convinced that in his eyes she also was but one of those brought into the world to minister to his pleasure and profit.  He had taken from her, as his weed, the most precious thing a woman has to give, and now that she was here again at his side, by some impulse incomprehensible to herself—­in spite of the wrong he had done her!—­had sought him out in danger, he had no thought of her, no word for her, no use save a menial one:  he cared nothing for any help she might be able to give, he had no perception of the new light which had broken within her soul....  The telephoning seemed interminable, yet she waited with a strange patience while he talked with Mr. George Chippering and two of the most influential directors.  These conversations had covered the space of an hour or more.  And perhaps as a result of self-suggestion, of his repeated assurances to Mr. Semple, to Mr. Chippering, and the directors of his ability to control the situation, Ditmar’s habitual self-confidence was gradually restored.  And when at last he hung up the instrument and turned to her, though still furious against the strikers, his voice betrayed the joy of battle, the assurance of victory.

“They can’t bluff me, they’ll have to guess again.  It’s that damned Holster—­he hasn’t any guts—­he’d give in to ’em right now if I’d let him.  It’s the limit the way he turned the Clarendon over to them.  I’ll show him how to put a crimp in ’em if they don’t turn up here to-morrow morning.”

He was so magnificently sure of her sympathy!  She did, not reply, but picked up her coat from the chair where she had laid it.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.  And she replied laconically, “Home.”

“Wait a minute,” he said, rising and taking a step toward her.

“You have an appointment with the Mayor,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he said, glancing at the clock over the door.  “Where have you been?—­where were you this morning?  I was worried about you, I—­I was afraid you might be sick.”

“Were you?” she said.  “I’m all right.  I had business in Boston.”

“Why didn’t you telephone me?  In Boston?” he repeated.