Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it.

“The public!” he exclaimed contemptuously.  “A whole lot of good they’ll do us.”

Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar.  She held her breath, her blood ran faster,—­the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal.

“All right—­remember what I say—­wait and see where you come out with that order.”  Holster’s voice trembled with anger.  He hesitated, and left the office abruptly.  Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and seated himself in his chair.  His eyes, still narrowed, had in them a gleam of triumph that thrilled her.  Combat seemed to stimulate and energize him.

“He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with the Clarendon,” Ditmar exclaimed.  “Well, he’ll have to guess again.  I’ve got his number.”  He began to turn over his letters.  “Let’s see, where were we?  Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the door.”

Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a pencil on a pad.  The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea of Ditmar’s daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever that hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that strange surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited, had wholly disappeared.  Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she, somehow, enlisted once again on his side.

“By the way,” he said abruptly, “you won’t mention this—­I know.”

“Won’t mention what?” she asked.

“This matter about the pay envelopes—­that we don’t intend to continue giving the operatives fifty-six hours’ pay for fifty-four when this law goes into effect.  They’re like animals, most of ’em, they don’t reason, and it might make trouble if it got out now.  You understand.  They’d have time to brood over it, to get the agitators started.  When the time comes they may kick a little, but they’ll quiet down.  And it’ll teach ’em a lesson.”

“I never mention anything I hear in this office,” she told him.

“I know you don’t,” he assured her, apologetically.  “I oughtn’t to have said that—­it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it spoken of.  You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator might make by getting them stirred up?  You can see what it means to me, with this order on my hands.  I’ve staked everything on it.”

“But—­when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that they are not receiving their full wages—­as Mr. Holster said?” Janet inquired.