"Good!" the wife cried, happily. "I'll help." Despite her distress over the situation as it affected both the workmen and her husband, she was elated by the fact that, at last, she was wholly within her husband's confidence; that, at last, she was actually to cooeperate with him in his business concerns: a practical, no longer merely a theoretical, partner! Hamilton himself gave the cap to the climax of her delight. "Now," he said, with a tender smile, "you're positively in business, according to your heart's desire. You're on the inside, all ready to fight the what-do-you-call-it." But a new thought had changed the mood of the impulsive bride. Of a sudden, she sobered, and her eyes widened in fear. "Yes," she said slowly, tremulously; "I'll help you, Charles, in any way that I can, for a strike would be too terrible. It would come between you and me." Small wonder that, Hamilton was astounded by this declaration on the part of his wife. His usually firm jaw relaxed, dropped; he sat staring at the fair woman opposite him with unrestrained amazement. "How under heaven could a strike at the factory come between you and me?" he queried, at last. The answer was slow in coming; but it came, none the less--came firmly, unhesitatingly, unequivocally. "If there were to be a strike, I could not let those women and those children suffer without doing something to help them." At this candid statement as to what her course would be, the husband stiffened in his chair. His expression grew severe, minatory. "What?" he ejaculated, harshly. "You'd use your money to help them? My wife use her money to fight me?" His frown was savage. Cicily preserved her appearance of calm confidence, although she was woefully minded to cower back, and to cover her eyes from the menace in his. She was a woman of strongly fixed principles, however chimerical her ideas in some directions, and now her conscience drove her on, when love would have bade her retreat. "I'd use my money to keep women and children from starving to death," she said, in a low voice, which trembled despite her will. Hamilton smothered an angry imprecation. He strove to master his wrath as he spoke again, very sternly: "Cicily, you are my wife. You have said that you were my partner. As either, as both, you have responsibilities toward my welfare that must be respected." "I'm a woman, with responsibilities as a human being first of all," was the undaunted retort. "I wouldn't be fit to be a wife, if I were to let women and children starve without trying to help." "Nonsense, Cicily!" Hamilton's anger was controlled now; but he remained greatly incensed over this stubborn folly on his wife's part, as he esteemed it. "Strikers don't starve to death, nowadays. They have benefits and funds, and all sorts of things, to help them. They don't even go hungry."