stream,
justification absolute and most complete for the new faith of which he
was the prophet. For the cause of the people had only been recognised
during recent days as something entirely distinct from the Socialism and
Syndicalism which had been its precursors. It was Maraton himself who
had raised it to the level of a religion.

To-night, however, there was a curious background to his thoughts. Some
part of his earlier life seemed stirred up in the man. The one
selfishness permitted to rank as a virtue in his sex was alive. His
heart had ceased to throb with the loiterers, the flotsam and jetsam of
the gutters. For the moment he was cast loose from the absorbed and
serious side of his career. A curious wave of sentiment had enveloped
him, a wave of sentiment unanalysable and as yet impersonal; he walked
as a man in a dream. For the first time he had seen and recognised the
imperishable thing in a woman's face.

He reached at last one of the large, somewhat gloomy squares in the
district between St. Pancras and New Oxford street, and paused before
one of the most remote houses situated at the extreme northeast corner.
He opened the front door with a latch-key and passed across a large but
simply furnished hall into his study. He entered a little abstractedly,
and it was not until he had closed the door behind him that he realised
the presence of another person in the room. At his entrance she had
risen to her feet.

"At last!" she exclaimed. "At last you have come!"

There was a silence, prolonged, curious, in a sense thrilling. A girl
of wonderful appearance had risen to her feet and was looking eagerly
towards him. She was wearing the plain black dress of a working woman,
whose clumsy folds inadequately concealed a figure of singular beauty
and strength. Her cheeks were colourless; her eyes large and deep, and
of a soft shade of grey, filled just now with the half wondering, half
worshipping expression of a pilgrim who has reached the Mecca of her
desires. Her hair--her shabby hat lay upon the table--was dark and
glossy. Her arms were a little outstretched. Her lips, unusually
scarlet against the pallor of her face, were parted. Her whole attitude
was one of quivering eagerness. Maraton stood and looked at her in
wonder. The little cloud of sentiment in which he had been moving,
perhaps, made him more than ever receptive to the impressions which she
seemed to create. Both the girl herself and her pose were spl