"'We,' you say; who else besides yourself, Howard?" she asked.
"A little handful of loyal ones."
"Then you will be outnumbered?"
"Six to one here in town if the shopmen go out. They have already threatened to burn the company's buildings if I don't comply with their demands, and I know the temper of the outfit well enough to give it full credit for any violence it promises. Won't you go and persuade the others to consent to run for it, Eleanor? It is simply the height of folly for you to hold the Nadia here. If I could have had ten words with your father this morning before he went out to the mine, you would all have been in Copah, long ago. Even now, if I could get word to him, I'm sure he would order the car out at once."
She nodded.
"Perhaps he would; quite likely he would—and he would stay here himself." Then, suddenly: "You may send the Nadia back to Copah on one condition—that you go with it."
At first he thought it was a deliberate insult; the cruelest indignity she had ever put upon him. Knowing his weakness, she was good-natured enough, or solicitous enough, to try to get him out of harm's way. Then the steadfast look in her eyes made him uncertain.
"If I thought you could say that, realizing what it means—" he began, and then he looked away.
"Well?" she prompted, and the hand slipped from his shoulder.
His eyes were coming back to hers. "If I thought you meant that," he repeated; "if I believed that you could despise me so utterly as to think for a moment that I would deliberately turn my back upon my responsibilities here—go away and hunt safety for myself, leaving the men who have stood by me to whatever——"