What more can you ask for? What more can you do for the people than fight for them side by side with me?" Maraton had moved a little nearer to the window. He was looking out into the night. Very faintly now in the distant woods he could still catch the song of the nightingale. Almost he fancied in the shadows that he could catch sight of Julia's strained face leaning towards him, the face of the prophetess, warning him against the easy ways, calling to him to remember. His principles had been to him a part of his life. What if he should be wrong? What if he should bring misery and suffering upon millions upon millions, for the sake of a generation which might never be born? There was something practical about Mr. Foley's offer, an offer which could have been made only by a great man. His brain moved swiftly. As he stood there, he seemed to look out upon a vast plain of misery, a country of silent furnaces, of smokeless chimneys, a country drooping and lifeless, dotted with the figures of dying men and women. What an offering! What a sacrifice? Would the people still believe in him when the blow fell? Could he himself pass out of life with the memory of it all in his mind, and feel that his life's work had been good? He remained speechless. "Let me force one more argument upon you," Mr. Foley continued. "You must know a little what type of mind is most common amongst Labour. I ask you what will be the attitude of Labour towards the starvation of the next ten or twenty years, if you should bring the ruin you threaten upon the country? I ask you to use your common sense. Of what use would you be? Who would listen to you? If they left you alive, would any audience of starving men and women, looking back upon the comparative prosperity of the past, listen to a word from your lips. Believe me, they would not. They would be more likely, if they found you, to rend you limb from limb. The operatives of this country are not dreamers. They don't want to give their wives and children, and their own selves, body and soul, for a dream. Therefore, I come back to the sane common sense of the whole affair. By this time next year, if you use your power to bring destruction upon this country, your name will be loathed and detested amongst the very people for whose sake you do it." Maraton turned away. "You have put some of my own fears before me, Mr. Foley," he confessed, "in a new and very impressive light. If I thought that I myself were the only one who could teach, you would indeed terrify me. The doctrines in which I believe, however, will endure, even though I should pass." "Endure to be discarded and despised by all thinking men!" Lord Armley exclaimed.