"What is it I am to do next? There is still a little money left to my account at the bank. It will keep me for a year and mother for a year—and then? I’m making Forbes hold out against the trust, and if he does hold out his mill is doomed. No hope there! Can I go back to the Law? I can’t, because the Law is just what the Church is. The Law was made by the powerful, it is interpreted by their paid servants and administered by their slaves. It is a game devised by the crafty powerful to cheat the simple weak. The last five years have proved that to me, and I’m ashamed that it took me so long to learn. Betty——" He did not dare to think of Betty. He thought rather of the open country, of the smell of the earth on which he had been lying twenty-four hours ago, and the coolness and freedom of the white clouds against that sky of blue.... Forbes was saying something about his grandfather and the Business. Luke got up. "There’s no use your wasting your breath," he declared. "Nothing that you could say would change me—no, nothing that even Betty could say! But I’ll do this: I’ll never be away from the factory again when I ought to be there; I’ll stand by you till we’ve beaten these strikers or till they’ve ruined us." He walked out of the room and closed the door before Forbes could answer him, and he walked into Betty’s arms. §3. "Luke," she whispered, "what was the matter this morning? Won’t you tell me, dear?" He felt the blood mount hotly to his head. Her hair was sweet to his nostrils. "Don’t," he said sharply. "But, Luke——" He drew her hands from his neck. He imprisoned her wrists in his grasp. "I don’t quite know what’s the matter—yet," he said. "It’s all come too suddenly. But, Betty—O, Betty, I don’t believe I’m the man for you!" She asked him what he meant, and he could not tell her. She pressed him, and he could only repeat his conviction. "Do you mean"—she drew her hands away—"that you like some other girl better?" He laughed rudely. "No," he said, "not that." "But you don’t care for me?" She recovered all her dignity. "If you don’t care for me, why aren’t you brave enough to say so?" The afternoon sun fell through the hall-window and showed her to him very fair. "Betty," he said slowly, "there are only two kinds of marriages you understand: there is the Church, but I don’t believe any more in any church; and there’s the Law, but the Law can’t make a marriage for me." At least the immediate purport of the words she understood. Her face burned red and then became white and still. "You mean——" she began. Her hands clenched. "Oh!" she cried. She tried to pass him. Passion left him, but a great sorrow took its place as his master. He wanted to justify himself; he even so wanted to repair the hurt done her that he would have shut his eyes to the new light. He seized her hand. "Betty!" She wrenched her hand. "Let me go! I want to go to father! Let me go!" "But, Betty, wait—listen——"