§10. "Betty," said Luke, as the girl nestled against him in the darkness of the cab that drove them toward her home, "this is going to be a hard battle." "Then you’ll win because you’re right." "I’m not so sure." Her arms went round his neck. "I don’t care whether you win or not," she whispered, "so long as you ought to win." §11. Forbes was waiting for them in the library. His rapidly-graying hair was disordered, and his face was even more worried than Nelson’s had been. "You’d better run to bed, dear," he said to Betty as he kissed her. "It’s late, and I’ve some heavy business to talk about to Luke." "I’m wide awake," protested Betty. "I couldn’t sleep if I did go to bed. I’ll sleep late to-morrow." "But then there is the business we must talk about." "I don’t care. I’ll like it. I won’t interrupt." She looked at Luke. "May I stay?" she asked. Luke smiled. "I wish you would," he said. Forbes made a gesture of surrender. "All right," said he. He turned to Luke and, as Betty seated herself between the two men, who remained standing, he continued: "They’re going to strike." "At the factory?" Luke had feared this. "What do they want?" "They want us to meet the hours and the wages that the trust is giving." "We can meet them as to hours, can’t we?" "We might. It would hurt us, but we might." "But not the wages?" "Not in five years." Luke lit a cigarette. He noted that his hand was steady, and its steadiness gratified him. "They’re well enough paid, aren’t they?" "You know the scale." "Well, it’s a fair one, isn’t it?" "What does that matter to them when they think they can get more?" "But you say they can’t, Forbes." "I can’t convince them of it. Their attitude is that if we can’t pay them what they want, the Business had better go out of existence.’ "You saw the men’s committee?" "This evening. That’s why I couldn’t come to your meeting." "And they won’t compromise?" "They might have, but things have gone too far. A lot of these I.W.W. organizers and agitators have been at work among them. I don’t know what will happen to the Business now." "We can get in strike-breakers and run the factory in spite of them." "If we do, there’ll be rioting. They might burn the building. These Industrial Workers of the World—you don’t know them." "I don’t see that we have any choice." Forbes looked away. "We have one," he muttered. Luke caught his wrist. "Look here," he demanded, "do you mean to say that this may have a political origin?" "I believe it has. I believe those letters you told me about——" "You want me to knuckle under?" asked Luke. Forbes looked at him. "Think what a strike might do to you politically," he said. "I don’t care about that." "Your friends might." "Not if they want to stay my friends. Besides, it can’t be true. The writer of those letters hates the I.W.W. like poison. He can’t have inspired them."