"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 as well as with the world?
The door was opened softly. Julia came in. Perhaps she guessed from his attitude something of his trouble, for she moved at once to his side.
"They have gone?" she asked.
"They have gone," he admitted.
She sighed.
"I shall not ask you anything," she said, "because I know. Pigs of men—pigs with their noses to the ground! How can they lift their heads! You could not make them understand!"
"I scarcely tried," he confessed. "They have found out, for one thing, that I am wealthy, a fact that does not concern them in the least, and they accused me of it as though it were a crime. It was all so hopeless. You cannot make men understand who have not the capacity for understanding. You cannot make the blind see. They even reminded me that they were Englishmen. They talked the usual rubbish about conquest and foreign enemies and patriotism."
"Clods!" she muttered. "But you?"