"I will write to M----. The letter shall go today. It must be."
"At last!" murmured the chief-engineer, half reproachfully. "It was high time!"
Arthur turned to his writing-table.
"Go over now and see that the Director and the other gentlemen remain at the posts I assigned them when I was at the works. It would have been useless to interfere in all the clamour this morning; perhaps now it may be possible. In half-an-hour I shall be with you. Should anything particular occur before send me word over at once."
Before leaving the room the official stepped up to his side again.
"I know what the resolution has cost you, Herr Berkow," he said earnestly, "and we none of us take the thing lightly, believe me, but we must not look on the dark side. Perhaps it may be settled without bloodshed after all."
He bowed and left the room, much too hurried and too preoccupied to notice Eugénie, who, at his approach, retreated still farther behind the sheltering curtain. Without looking to the right or the left, he passed rapidly through the adjoining room and closed the door after him. Husband and wife were alone together.
Arthur had only replied by a bitter smile to the chief-engineer's parting words.
"Too late!" he said to himself, "they will not yield until blood is shed. I must reap what my father has sown."
He threw himself down on a chair and leaned his head on his hands. Now that he had not to meet the eyes of strangers, now that he need no longer play the leader on whose resolution all depended, the look of energy faded from his face, and, in its place, came one of exhaustion, such as may overcome the strongest man when, for weeks at a stretch, his powers of mind and body have been overwrought and strained to the uttermost.