"I do not wear pretty clothes," she said.

"Little fool!" he exclaimed. "Just because you've the big things
beating in your brain, you'd like to close your eyes to the fact that
your sex is the most wonderful thing on God's earth. That's the worst
of a woman. If ever she begins to think seriously, she does her hair in
a lump, changes silk for cotton, forgets her corsets, and leaves off
ribbons. Silly, silly child!" he went on, shaking his forefinger at
her. "I tell you women have done their greatest work in the world when
their brains have been covered with a pretty hat. . . . There she
goes, he growled," as she left the room. "Thinks I'm a flippant old
windbag, I know. And I'm not. Why don't you fall in love with her,
Maraton? It would be the making of you. Even a prophet needs
relaxation. She is yours, body and soul. One can tell it with every
sentence she speaks. And she is for the cause," he concluded with a
graver note in his tone. "She has found the fire somewhere. There were
women like her who held Robespierre's hand."

Maraton glanced up. Selingman was leaning forward and his eyes were
fixed steadily upon his friend.

"I was afraid, just a little afraid," he said slowly, "of the other
woman. I am glad she didn't count enough. Women are the very devil
sometimes when they come between us and the right thing!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

Selingman came into the restaurant with a huge rose in his buttonhole
and another bunch of flowers--carnations this time--in his hands. He
made his way to the little round table where Julia and Aaron were
seated.

"For you, Miss Julia," he declared, depositing them by her side. "Pin
them in the front of your frock. Drink wine to-night. Be gay. Let us
see pink, also, in your cheeks. It is a great evening, this. Maraton
is here?"

"Not yet," Julia answered, smiling.

Selingman sat down between them. He gave a lengthy order to a waiter;
then he turned abruptly to Julia.

"He will keep to it, you think? This time you believe that he has made
up his mind?"

"I do," she asserted vigorously.

"What is he made of, that man?" Selingman continued, sipping the
Vermouth which he had just ordered. "He makes love to you, eh? Ach!
never mind your brother. For a man like Maraton, what does it matter?
You are of the right stuff. You would be proud."

She looked steadily out of the restaurant.

"I have been a worker," she said, "in a clothing factory since I was old
enough to stand up, an