She nodded.  He started forward again, but she avoided him.

“What’s the matter?” he cried.  “I’ve been worried about you all day —­until this damned strike broke loose.  I was afraid something had happened.”

“You might have asked my father,” she said.

“For God’s sake, tell me what’s the matter!”

His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last been established.  He was conscious, however, of irritation because this whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere with his cherished plans—­for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of humanity by the yardstick of his desires.  Her question as to why he had not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude.  As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn on him.  His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck him.

“I hate you!” she said.  She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate, concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic quality of a bullet.  And save for the impact of it—­before which he physically recoiled—­its import was momentarily without meaning.

“What?” he exclaimed, stupidly.

“I might have known you never meant to marry me,” she went on.  Her hands were busy with the buttons of her coat.

“All you want is to use me, to enjoy me and turn me out when you get tired of me—­the way you’ve done with other women.  It’s just the same with these mill hands, they’re not human beings to you, they’re—­they’re cattle.  If they don’t do as you like, you turn them out; you say they can starve for all you care.”

“For God’s sake, what do you mean?” he demanded.  “What have I done to you, Janet?  I love you, I need you!”

“Love me!” she repeated.  “I know how men of your sort love—­I’ve seen it—­I know.  As long as I give you what you want and don’t bother you, you love me.  And I know how these workers feel,” she cried, with sudden, passionate vehemence.  “I never knew before, but I know now.  I’ve been with them, I marched up here with them from the Clarendon when they battered in the gates and smashed your windows—­and I wanted to smash your windows, too, to blow up your mill.”

“What are you saying?  You came here with the strikers? you were with that mob?” asked Ditmar, astoundedly.

“Yes, I was in that mob.  I belong there, with them, I tell you—­I don’t belong here, with you.  But I was a fool even then, I was afraid they’d hurt you, I came into the mill to find you, and you—­and you you acted as if you’d never seen me before.  I was a fool, but I’m glad I came—­I’m glad I had a chance to tell you this.”