me?" His frown was savage.

Cicily preserved her appearance of calm confidence, although she was
woefully minded to cower back, and to cover her eyes from the menace in
his. She was a woman of strongly fixed principles, however chimerical
her ideas in some directions, and now her conscience drove her on, when
love would have bade her retreat.

"I'd use my money to keep women and children from starving to death,"
she said, in a low voice, which trembled despite her will.

Hamilton smothered an angry imprecation. He strove to master his wrath
as he spoke again, very sternly:

"Cicily, you are my wife. You have said that you were my partner. As
either, as both, you have responsibilities toward my welfare that must
be respected."

"I'm a woman, with responsibilities as a human being first of all," was
the undaunted retort. "I wouldn't be fit to be a wife, if I were to let
women and children starve without trying to help."

"Nonsense, Cicily!" Hamilton's anger was controlled now; but he remained
greatly incensed over this stubborn folly on his wife's part, as he
esteemed it. "Strikers don't starve to death, nowadays. They have
benefits and funds, and all sorts of things, to help them. They don't
even go hungry."

"Then, why do they ever give in?" was the pertinent query. "I tell you
they do go hungry--often, even at the best of times. I've been down
among those people. I've seen them with three, six, children to feed and
clothe, and rent to pay, on two to four dollars a day. What chance have
they to save? I tell you, if there's a strike, some of them will starve,
and, if you let them starve, Charles, you won't be my husband!"

"Cicily!"

"I mean it." The wife rose from her chair, went to her husband, and
kissed him, tenderly, sorrowfully. Then, she turned to leave the room.

But, before she reached the door, Hamilton spoke again, gravely, quite
without anger:

"Cicily, my dear," he said, "I give you credit for being as sincere and
honest as you are foolish. So, the only chance for all of us is that you
should do your best now, at once, to prevent an issue that may spell
catastrophe for all of us. It's up to you now, my dear partner, to do
your best to win them, to keep them from striking."

The young wife paused in the doorway, and faced her husband. There was a
trace of tears veiling the radiance of the golden eyes. Her voice
quivered, but the low music of it was very earnest:

"I will, Charles--I will fight