The next day he went to Margaret Ormsby at the settlement house. With her he used no art. Driving straight to the point he told her of the undertaker's daughter sitting beside him on the eminence above Coal Creek, of the barber and his talk of women on the park bench and how that had led him to that other woman kneeling on the floor in the little frame house, his fists in her hair and of Edith Carson whose companionship had saved him from all of these. “If you can't hear all of this and still want life with me,” he said, “there is no future for us together. I want you. I'm afraid of you and afraid of my love for you but still I want you. I've been seeing your face floating above the audiences in the halls where I've been at work. I've looked at babies in the arms of workingmen's wives and wanted to see my babe in your arms. I care more for what I am doing than I do for you but I love you.” McGregor arose and stood over her. “I love you with my arms aching to close about you, with my brain planning the triumph of the workers, with all of the old perplexing human love that I had almost thought I would never want. “I can't bear this waiting. I can't bear this not knowing so that I can tell Edith. I can't have my mind filled with the need of you just as men are beginning to catch the infection of an idea and are looking to me for clear-headed leadership. Take me or let me go and live my life.” Margaret Ormsby looked at McGregor. When she spoke her voice was as quiet as the voice of her father telling a workman in the shop what to do with a broken machine. “I am going to marry you,” she said simply. “I am full of the thought of it. I want you, want you so blindly that I think you can't understand.” She stood up facing him and looked into his eyes. “You must wait,” she said. “I must see Edith, I myself must do that. All these years she has served you--she has had that privilege.” McGregor looked across the table into the beautiful eyes of the woman he loved. “You belong to me even if I do belong to Edith,” he said. “I will see Edith,” Margaret answered again. CHAPTER VI McGregor left the telling of the story of his love to Margaret. Edith Carson who knew defeat so well and who had in her the courage of defeat was to meet defeat at his hands through the undefeated woman and he let himself forget the whole matter. For a month he had been trying to get workingmen to take up the idea of the Marching Men without success and after the talk with Margaret he kept doggedly at the work. And then one evening something happened that aroused him. The Marching Men idea that had become more than half intellectualised became again a burning passion and the matter of his life with women got itself cleared up swiftly and finally.