"And here I am--hanging round her"--he said to himself, as he strolled about the room, peering through his eye-glass at its common vases, and trivial knick-knacks--"just because Blaydes bothers me. I might as well cry for the moon. But she's worth watching, by Jove. One gets copy out of her, if nothing else! I vow I can't understand why my dithyrambs move her so little--she's dithyrambic enough herself!" The door opened. He quickly pulled himself together. Gertrude Marvell came in, and as she gave him an absent greeting, he was vaguely struck by some change in her aspect, as Delia had long been. She had always seemed to him a cold half-human being, in all ordinary matters. But now she was paler, thinner, more remote than ever. "Nerves strained--probably sleepless--" he said to himself. "It's the pace they will live at--it kills them all." This kind of comment ran at the back of his brain, while he plunged into the "business"--which was his pretence for calling. Gertrude, as a District Organizer of the League of Revolt, had intrusted him with the running of various meetings in small places, along the coast, for which it humiliated him to remember that he had agreed to be paid. For at his very first call upon them, Miss Marvell had divined his impecunious state, and pounced upon him as an agent,--unknown, he thought, to Miss Blanchflower. He came now to report what had been done, and to ask if the meetings should be continued. Gertrude Marvell shook her head. "I have had some letters about your meetings. I doubt whether they have been worth while." Miss Marvell's manner was that of an employer to an employee. Lathrop's vanity winced. "May I know what was wrong with them?" Gertrude Marvell considered. Her gesture, unconsciously judicial, annoyed Lathrop still further. "Too much argument, I hear,--and too little feeling. Our people wanted more about the women in prison. And it was thought that you apologised too much for the outrages." The last word emerged quite simply, as the only fitting one. Lathrop laughed,--rather angrily. "You must be aware, Miss Marvell, that the public thinks they want defence." "Not from us!" she said, with energy. "No one speaking for us must ever apologise for militant acts. It takes all the heart out of our people. Justify them--glory in them--as much as you like." There was a pause. "Then you have no more work for me?" said Lathrop at last. "We need not, I think, trouble you again. Your cheque will of course be sent from head-quarters." "That doesn't matter," said Lathrop, hastily. The reflection crossed his mind that there is an insolence of women far more odious than the insolence of men. "After all they are our inferiors! It doesn't do to let them command us," he thought, furiously. He rose to take his leave. "You are going up to London?" "I am going. Miss Blanchflower stays behind, because her maid is ill."