"Remember that I am no magician," he warned her.
"Ah, but your very presence alters everything!" she cried. "It makes everything possible—everything. My brother, too, is mad with excitement. He hoped that you might have been at the Clarion Hall to-night, before you went to Downing Street. You have seen Mr. Foley and talked with him?"
"I have come straight from there," he told her. "Foley is a shrewd man.
He sees the writing upon the wall. He is afraid."
She looked at him and laughed.
"They will try to buy you," she remarked scornfully. "They will try to deal with you as they did with Blake and others like him—you—Maraton! Oh, I wonder if England knows what it means, your coming!—if she really feels the breaking dawn!"
"Tell me about yourself?" Maraton asked, a little abruptly—"your work? I know you only by name, remember—your articles in the reviews and your evidence before the Woman Labour Commission.
"I am a tailoress," she replied. "It is horrible work, but I have the good fortune to be quick. I can make a living—there are many who cannot."
He was leaning back in his chair, his head supported by his hand, his eyes fixed curiously upon her. Her pallor was not wholly the pallor of ill-health. In her beautiful eyes shone the fire of life. She laughed at him softly and held out her hands for his inspection. They were shapely enough, but her finger-tips were scotched and pricked.
"Here are the hall-marks of my trade. Others who work by my side have fallen away. It is of their sufferings I have written. I myself am physically very strong. It is the average person who counts."
He looked at her thoughtfully.