"I can understand," Tallente intervened, "that you feel bound to take this seriously, Dartrey, but after all there is nothing traitorous to our cause in what I wrote. I attacked the trades unions for their colossal and fiendish selfishness when the Empire was tottering. I would do it again under the same circumstances. Remember I was fresh from Ypres. I had seen Englishmen, not soldiers but just hastily trained citizens--bakers, commercial travellers, clerks, small tradesmen--butchered like rabbits but fighting for their country, dying for it--and all the time those blackguardly stump orators at home turned their backs to France and thought the time opportune to wrangle for a rise in wages and bring the country to the very verge of a universal strike. It didn't come off, I know, but there were very few people who really understood how near we were to it. Dartrey, we sacrifice too much of our real feelings to political necessity. I won't apologize for my article; I'll defend it." Dartrey sighed. "It will be a difficult task, Tallente. The spirit has gone. People have forgotten already the danger which we so narrowly escaped--forgotten before the grass has grown on the graves of our saviours." "Still, you wouldn't have Mr. Tallente give in without a struggle?" Jane asked. "I hope that Tallente will fight," Dartrey replied, "but I must warn you, Lady Jane, that I am the guardian of a cause, and for that reason I am an opportunist. If the division of our party which consists of the trades unionists refuses to listen to any explanation and threatens severance if Tallente remains, then he will have to go." "So far as your personal view is concerned," Tallente asked, "you could do without Miller, couldn't you?" "I could thrive without him," Dartrey declared heartily. "Then you shall," Tallente asserted. "We'll show the world what his local trades unionism stands for. He has belittled the whole principle of cooperation. He twangs all the time one brazen chord instead of seeking to give expression to the clear voices of the millions. Miller would impoverish the country with his accursed limited production, his threatened strikes, his parochial outlook. Englishmen are brimful of common sense, Dartrey, if you know where to dig for it. We'll materialise your own dream. We'll bring the principles of socialism into our human and daily life and those octopus trades unions shall feel the knife." Jane laid her hand for a moment upon his arm. "Why aren't you oftener enthusiastic?" He glanced at her swiftly. Their eyes met. Fearlessly she held his fingers for a moment,--a long, wonderful moment. "I was getting past enthusiasms," he said; "I was dropping into the dry-as-dust school--the argumentative, logical, cold, ineffectual school. The last few months have changed that. I feel young again. If Dartrey will give me a free hand, I'll deliver up to him Miller's bones."