she said.

"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!"

His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that
something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had
congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last
been established. He was conscious, however, of irritation because this
whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at
the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere
with his cherished plans--for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of
humanity by the yardstick of his desires. Her question as to why he had
not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude.
As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that
there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn
on him. His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck him.

"I hate you!" she said. She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate,
concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic
quality of a bullet. And save for the impact of it--before which he
physically recoiled--its import was momentarily without meaning.

"What?" he exclaimed, stupidly.

"I might have known you never meant to marry me," she went on. Her hands
were busy with the buttons of her coat.

"All you want is to use me, to enjoy me and turn me out when you get
tired of me--the way you've done with other women. It's just the same
with these mill hands, they're not human beings to you, they're--they're
cattle. If they don't do as you like, you turn them out; you say they can
starve for all you care."

"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded. "What have I done to
you, Janet? I love you, I need you!"

"Love me!" she repeated. "I know how men of your sort love--I've seen
it--I know. As long as I give you what you want and don't bother you, you
love me. And I know how these workers feel," she cried, with sudden,
passionate vehemence. "I never knew before, but I know now. I've been
with them, I marched up here with them from the Clarendon when they
battered in the gates and smashed your windows--and I wanted to smash
your windows, too, to blow up your mill."

"What are you saying? You came here with the strikers? you were with that
mob?" asked Ditmar, astoundedly.

"Yes, I was in that mob. I belong there, with them, I tell you--I don't
belong here, with you. But I was a fool even then, I was af