Cantor turned to her again. “The parade is over,” he said. “Where shall we go?”
“Home,” she said, in a low tone—a frightened, lonely tone.
“I’ve offended you?”
“No, I’m not offended. I’m not even surprised.”
“Good,” he said. “Suppose, then, we eliminate the idea of marriage. Substitute my suggestion.”
She looked into his eyes with a show of courage, a show of steadiness, but it was bravado. Her soul quaked. For the first time in her brief life squalid evil leered at her from the shadows; she knew it awaited her around the next corner, licking its leering, slavering lips. It lay in wait. One unguarded second, one instant when the protection of that virtue which is breathed into every woman’s soul from the great Mother Soul was drugged by stealth or stunned by brutal blow, and she might be lost.
“Let us go,” she said.
She had carried herself better than she knew. Cantor was left perplexed. She baffled him. He did not know what to think nor what had been the result of his words.
CHAPTER XXII
Through September and October the labor situation grew more and more acute. It was not that labor made unreasonable demands which Potter could not satisfy; it was not class unrest, not the work of professional agitators—it was fear. Some agency was skilfully and systematically frightening the men who worked on the government’s motor. Potter discussed the phenomenon with his father.