"Labour troubles, my boy! You need have no fear on that score. We're going to teach Labour a lesson. We haven't built up our reserve for nothing.--not only ourselves, but all the houses in the trade. For long enough we've been dictated to by Labour--and now, by God, we're going to crush it! Do you know what's coming, my boy? Have you thought about it? There's going to be the biggest flood of Labour chucked on the market that the world has ever known. All of 'em fightin'--_fightin'_ for jobs! And the trade, Harry, my boy, is going to _lock out_! We're closed down now, and we shan't open again till our own good time. How long d'you think the Union funds'll last? _We'll bust 'em_--bust 'em for ever and a day. And when we open our shops again to Labour--it'll be on our own terms! Here, fill up, gentlemen, I can vouch for this wine--cost me a sinful price it did. We'll bust 'em, my lad, so that never again in our time shall we hear a word of Labour trouble." He gulped the glassful of his sinfully costly wine. Captain Hathaway glanced round the table at the somewhat flushed, semi-senile features of his father's guests and partners. They were one and all nodding their heads in varying emphasis of approbation. He got up. "Well, father, I don't think we'll discuss it now. Suppose we join the ladies?" In the high drawing-room, softly lit with diffused radiance from the ceiling, draped with precious modern hangings that were genuine and spaced out with expensive antique paintings that were not, furnished with the luxury of a wealth too utterly complete in its overwhelming newness to allow imagination its leap across an artistic restraint, the ladies purred, or cooed in careful falsetto, as they awaited the entrance of the males. At a grand piano, slightly removed, a young woman with a delicately refined face played softly to herself--in a quiet ecstasy of gladness for which this was the only satisfying expression. Captain Hathaway, entering with his father's guests, came straight across to her, and she looked up, smiling, into her husband's face as though he had come in response to a murmured summoning spell. She ceased and leaned back her head against him as he stood close behind her. "Oh, Harry," she said, "it's so lovely to have you again--for always, always!" Her eyes half closed and her bosom heaved as she drank in an intoxicating realization of his definite return, sketched to herself a delicious little swoon. "My dear!" he murmured. "It's good! Home--home for always with my beloved!" She clutched at his hand, and for a moment, while the loud-voiced crowd vanished, they were secret lovers, snatched up to dizzy heights, intensely thrilling with an exquisite community, eyes looking into eyes and seeing more than human brain can translate of transcendent vision. She released him and bowed forward suddenly with a little gulp, striking, with trembling hands, vague chords on the piano.