t
our trade, they'd be glad of our country. They've bribed this man
Maraton to get it without the trouble of fighting for it, even!"

Maraton moved towards the door. Holding it open, he turned and faced
them.

"Before I came," he said, "I hoped that you might be men. I find you
just the usual sort of pigmies. You call yourselves people's men! You
haven't mastered the elementary truths of your religion. What's
England, or France, or any other country in the world, by the side of
humanity? Be off! I'll go my own way. Go yours, and take your little
tinsel of jingoism with you. Whenever you want to fight me, I shall be
ready."

"And fight you we shall," Peter Dale thundered, "mark you that! There's
limits, even to us. The Government of this country mayn't be all it
should be, but, after all, it's our English Government, and there is a
point at which every man has to support it. The law is the law, and so
you may find out, my friend!"

They filed out. Maraton closed the door after them. He was alone. He
threw open the window to get rid of the odour of tobacco smoke which
still hung about. The echo of their raucous voices seemed still in the
air. These were the men who should have been his friends and
associates! These were the men to whom he had the right to look for
sympathy! They treated him like a dangerous lunatic. Their own small
interests, their own small careers were threatened, and they were up in
arms without a moment's hesitation. Not one of them had made the
slightest attempt to see the whole truth. The word "revolution" had
terrified them. The approach of a crisis had driven their thoughts into
one narrow focus: what would it mean for them?

He resumed his seat. The empty chairs pushed back seemed, somehow or
other, allegorical. He was alone. The man for whose friendship he had
indeed felt some desire, the man who had opened his hands and heart to
him--Stephen Foley--would know him henceforth no more. He drew his
thoughts resolutely away from that side of his life, closed his ears to
the music which beat there, crushed down the fancies which sprang up so
easily if ever he relaxed his hold upon his will. He was lonely; for
the first time in his life, perhaps, intensely lonely. In all the
country there was scarcely a human being who would not soon look upon
him as a madman. What did one live for, after all? Just to continue
the dull, hopeless struggle--to fight without hope of reward, to fight
with oneself a