"No, I'm not offended. I'm not even surprised." "Good," he said. "Suppose, then, we eliminate the idea of marriage. Substitute my suggestion." She looked into his eyes with a show of courage, a show of steadiness, but it was bravado. Her soul quaked. For the first time in her brief life squalid evil leered at her from the shadows; she knew it awaited her around the next corner, licking its leering, slavering lips. It lay in wait. One unguarded second, one instant when the protection of that virtue which is breathed into every woman's soul from the great Mother Soul was drugged by stealth or stunned by brutal blow, and she might be lost. "Let us go," she said. She had carried herself better than she knew. Cantor was left perplexed. She baffled him. He did not know what to think nor what had been the result of his words. CHAPTER XXII Through September and October the labor situation grew more and more acute. It was not that labor made unreasonable demands which Potter could not satisfy; it was not class unrest, not the work of professional agitators--it was fear. Some agency was skilfully and systematically frightening the men who worked on the government's motor. Potter discussed the phenomenon with his father. "The men are restless," he said, bitterly. "One day they're going to walk out in a mob." "Can't you satisfy them?" Fabius Waite said, looking at the problem from the old angle of capital and labor. "That's a thing that doesn't enter into it, father. They're frightened. They have cause. I'm frightened myself." "Well?" "We've been delayed. We should have been delivering in quantities by this date, but what have we done? Not even a miserable dribble of motors has gone out. Not enough to experiment with, enough to play with in a few aviation camps.... But we've got to equip an army. Small things have happened, but every one of them is threatening, and the men see and worry about them." "Bosh!" "It's not bosh, father! These men aren't soldiers, trained to risk their lives. They are ordinary working-men, trying to support their families. I'm afraid for them. We're getting along now, in spite of all delays. We're getting in shape to produce. It's the moment we _are_ ready that I'm afraid of, the moment when these sabotage tactics have to be thrown in the discard. The man who is organizing this thing knows we will get ready in spite of all he can do.... He's planning for that day. I'd bet my life on it. When we are ready he'll be ready--and he'll strike if we don't prevent him. The moment it will pay him best to try to destroy this plant is when the plant is completed. That would be the hardest blow he could deliver, and he's the man to deliver it. Whoever he is, he's too much for Downs and his men." "Get him," said his father.