Tom took one of the two easy chairs in the room, and once again went over the happenings of the previous night. She interrupted again and again with indignant exclamations. "Why, you didn't lose at all!" she cried, when he had finished the episode of the eight drunken men. "You won, and it was stolen from you! Your Mr. Foley is a--a----" Whichever way she turned for an adequate word she ran against a restriction barring its use by femininity. "A robber!" she ended. "But aren't you going to protest the election?" "I shall--certainly. But there's mighty little chance of the result being changed. Foley'll see to that." He tried to look brave, but Ruth guessed the bitterness within. She yearned to have him talk over things with her; her sympathy for him now that she beheld him dispirited after a daring fight was even warmer than when she had seen him pulsing with defiant vigor. "Won't you tell me what you are going to do? If you don't mind." "I'd tell if I knew. But I hardly have my bearings yet." "Are you sure you can't work at your trade?" "Not unless I kiss Foley's shoes." She did not like to ask him if he were going to give in, but the question was in her face, and he saw it. "I'm not that bad licked yet." "There's Mr. Driscoll's offer," she suggested. "Yes. I've thought of that. I don't know what move I'll make next. I don't just see now how I'm going to keep at the fight, but I'm not ready to give it up. If I took Mr. Driscoll's job, I'd have to drop the fight, for I'd practically have to drop out of the union. If the protest fails--well, we'll see." Ruth looked at him thoughtfully, and she thrilled with a personal pride in him. He had been beaten; the days just ahead looked black for him; but his spirit, though exhausted, was unbroken. As a result of her experience she was beginning to regard business as being largely a compromise between self-respect and profit. In Tom's place she guessed what Mr. Baxter would do, and she knew what Mr. Driscoll would do; and the thing they would do was not the thing that Tom was doing. And she wondered what would be the course of Mr. Berman. At the moment of parting she said to him, in her frank, impulsive way: "I think you are the bravest man I have ever known." He could only stumble away from her awkwardly, for to this his startled brain had no proper answer. His courage began to bubble back into him; and the warmth aroused by her words grew and grew--till he drew near his home, and then a chill began to settle about him. Maggie was reading the installment of a serial story in an evening paper when he came in. She glanced up, then quickly looked back at her paper without speaking. He started into the bedroom in silence, but paused hesitant in the doorway and looked at her. "What are you reading, Maggie?" "The Scarlet Stain."