Meanwhile Daphne sat on, her head still bowed. Through the night air, from the hotel verandah, there came the refrain of a waltz. It was called _Caressante_, she thought. Carthew knew it too, and dug his teeth into his lower lip. Waltzes have an unfortunate habit of reviving the memories of yester year. "Don't go in," said Daphne at length. "Don't leave me--I can't bear it!" Her voice broke. Suddenly Carthew turned to her. "Daphne"--his voice was low, but he spoke with intense earnestness--"you are lonely, I know, and sad; and you are too proud to own it. Shall I tell you who is more lonely and more sad, and too proud to own it too?" "Do you mean--" were Jim Carthew's good resolutions crumbling?--"yourself?" "No, no,--nothing of the kind. I mean--your husband!" Then he continued hurriedly-- "Daphne, if I thought I was leaving you to real loneliness and inevitable wretchedness, I--well, perhaps I shouldn't go away at all. But I--I am not needed. Little friend, you have the finest husband in all the world, waiting for you. For all his domineering ways, he is shy, and wants knowing. You have never discovered that. I don't believe you know him a bit. It all comes of having begun wrong. Go back and study him. Give him a fair chance! Give yourself a fair chance! You and I have always been friends: will you promise me this? Go back, and give yourself and Jack Carr another chance." Half an hour ago Daphne would have smiled sceptically and indulgently upon such a suggestion. But this lonely, loyal spirit had touched her. She felt she would like to please him. "Very well," she said. "I promise. No, _I can't_!" The memory of some ancient wrong suddenly surged up in her, swamping the generous impulse. "_I can't!_" "Why?" "Jack is so hard," she said. "Look at the way he treats those in his power. His workpeople, his----" Carthew laughed, positively boisterously. "Hard? Jack Carr hard? Listen," he said, "and I will tell you a secret." * * * * * When he had finished Daphne stood up, white and gleaming in the moonlight, and gave him her hand. "All right," she said softly--"it's a bargain. I go home to-morrow." BOOK THREE. THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. SOME ONE TO CONFIDE IN. Certainly matters were in a serious state in the Mirkley Colliery district. The whole industrial world was unsettled at the time. There had been trouble on the railways, and a great shipyard strike was threatening in Scotland. Most serious of all, the men were beginning to defy their own leaders. They had taken to organising little sectional revolts of their own, and Employers' Federations were beginning to ask how they could be expected to ratify treaties with Trades Union officials who were unable to hold their own followers to the terms of agreements concluded on their behalf.