w all about those strikes. What was the real cause? We don't
understand them here."

"If you really want to know--nerves," she said earnestly and
triumphantly.

"Nerves?"

"Overwork. No rest. No change. Everlasting punishment. The one
incomprehensible thing to me is that the whole of Glasgow didn't go on
strike and stay out for ever."

"There's just as much overwork in London as there is on the Clyde."

"There's a lot more talking--Parliament, Cabinet, Committees. You
should hear what they say about it in Glasgow."

"Con," he said kindly, "you don't suspect it, but you're childish.
It's the job of one part of London to talk. If that part of London
didn't talk your tribes on the Clyde couldn't work, because they
wouldn't know what to do, nor how to do it. Talking has to come
before working, and let me tell you it's more difficult, and it's more
killing, because it's more responsible. Excuse this common sense made
easy for beginners, but you brought it on yourself."

She frowned. "And what do you do? Do you talk or work?" She smiled.

"I'll tell you this!" said he, smiling candidly and benevolently. "It
took me a dickens of a time really to _put_ myself into anything that
meant steady effort. I'd lost the habit. Natural enough, and I'm not
going into sackcloth about it. However, I'm improving. I'm going
to take on the secretaryship of the Lechford Committee. Some of 'em
mayn't want me, but they'll have to have me. And when they've got
me they'll have to look out. All of them, including Queen and her
mother."

"Will it take the whole of your time?"

"Yes. I'm doing three days a week now."

"I suppose you think you've beaten me."

"Con, I do ask you not to be a child."

"But I am a child. Why don't you humour me? You know I've had a
nervous breakdown. You used to humour me."

He shook his head.

"Humouring you won't do _your_ nervous breakdown any good. It might
some women's--but not yours."

"You shall humour me!" she cried. "I haven't told you half my ruin.
Do you know I meant to love Carly all my life. I felt sure I should.
Well, I can't! It's gone, all that feeling--already! In less than two
years! And now I'm only sorry for him and sorry for myself. Isn't it
horrible? Isn't it horrible?"

"Try not to think," he murmured.

She sat up impetuously.

"Don't talk such damned nonsense! 'Try not to think'! Why, my
frightful unhappiness is the one thing that keeps me alive."

"Yes," G.J. yielded. "I