Edna had developed into a beautiful woman; more beautiful, indeed, than she herself had any idea of. She was more sedate and reserved than when she had left home, and more prone to sit thoughtfully, chin in hand, and ponder, with her dreamy eyes trying to peer into the future. Resolutely as she had set herself to put Marsten forever out of her thoughts, she never succeeded, and his vibrant, deep-toned voice often came back to her. Although she had been brought up in a democratic way, and theoretically held that one person was technically as good as another, yet she lived in a country where a grocer’s daughter considers it quite beneath her dignity to be seen in company with a green-grocer’s daughter; while the daughter of a draper, from her serene social altitude, would have some difficulty in distinguishing the relative status of the other two, although she would be well aware that the adjective “green” carried comparative degradation with it. Edna was the daughter of a man who had been a workman; yet, when she thought over the proposal she had received in the school garden, she was slightly shocked to think that a workman should aspire to the hand of his master’s daughter. She had conversed with Marsten, and discussed the problems that had interested them both, yet never for a moment had the thought of equality between them entered her mind. He was merely a workman, and, when that was said, a gulf yawned. But love levels all ranks, as a distinguished man has sung, and, as the young woman meditated on the subject in all its bearings, the social barriers seemed to become less and less tangible. She remembered that no thought of social inequality had ever occurred to her while in his presence. She got no further in the understanding of her own feelings than the conclusion that she liked him very much indeed, and had a strong admiration for his manliness and his determination to succeed. When the strike came on, and she knew that her father and her lover were opponents, her state of mind was one of great perplexity. It was hard that one or the other must be defeated, and she sighed when she thought of the relentlessness of fate in bringing into savage opposition the two men who were now dearer to her than all the world beside.