"I am sorry, Richard," she said, "if I have ever misled you, but I hope that from now onward, at any rate, there need be no shadow of misunderstanding. I do not intend to marry. My work is the greatest thing in life to me, and I can continue it better unmarried."
"It's the first time you've talked like this," he persisted. "Amy Chatterton, Rachael Weiss, and most of 'em are married. They stick at it all right, don't they? What's the matter with your doing the same?"
"Different people have different ideas," she pronounced. "Please be my friend, Richard, and do not worry me about this. You can easily find some one else. There are any number of girls, I'm sure, who'd be proud to be your wife. As for me, it is impossible."
"And why is it impossible?" he demanded, in a portentous tone.
"Because I do not care for you in that way," she answered, "and because I have no desire to marry at all."
He smoked sullenly at his pipe for several moments. All the time his eyes were filled with smouldering malevolence.
"Now I am going to begin to talk," he said. "Don't look as though you were going to run away, because you're not. I am going to talk to you about that fellow Maraton."
"Why do you mention his name?" she asked, stiffening. "What has he to do with it?"
"A good deal, to my thinking," was the grim reply. "It's my belief that you've a fancy for him, and that's why you've turned against me."
"You've no right to say anything of the sort!" she exclaimed.
"And, by God, why haven't I?" he insisted, striking his knee with his clenched fist. "Haven't you been my girl for six years before he came? You were kind of shy, but you'd have been mine in the end, and you know it. Waiting was all I had to do, and I was content to wait. And now he's come along, and I know very well that I haven't a dog's chance. You're a working lass, Julia, fit mate for a working man. Do you think he's one of our sort? Not he! Do you think he's for marrying a girl who works for her bread? If you do, you're a bigger fool than I think you. He's forever nosing around amongst these swell ladies and gentlemen with handles to their names, ladies and gentlemen who live on the other side of the earth to us. He can talk like a prophet, I grant you, but that's all there is of the prophet about him. People's man, indeed! He'll be the people's man so long as it pays him and not a second longer."