Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/307

302 "Do you want me to be kind to you?"

"It's the only want I have."

"Then stop this strike. Stop it and ask anything decent of me and it's yours. But until you do stop it, don't speak to me, nor look at me, nor so much as whisper my name."

She turned and swept out from his presence, and when she was gone he dropped back into his chair, stared at the blank walls around him, and cursed the evil days on which he had so ingloriously fallen.

But he resolved to win back the favor of the woman for whose sake he would joyously have walked straight to perdition.

Through the bleak March morning, past piles of grimy, half-melted snow, Mary Bradley went. Two blocks up, at the corner of the street which led from the mill, she met Barry Malleson. He had gone early, as he had said he would, to procure her check. He drew it from his pocket now and gave it to her.

"It only needs your endorsement," he said, "and you can get the money at any bank."

"Thank you, Barry! Now I want you to go with me."

"Where?" And before she could reply he added: "It doesn't matter where. I'll go, and be glad to."

But she told him where she wished him to go.

"I'm going to see Mr. Farrar," she said. "Perhaps he can do something to put an end to this unbearable tragedy."

They found him in his study. The darkness of the morning had made necessary the lighting of his table-lamp, and vague shadows filled the room and moved unsteadily up and down his gray face as he bent to his work or sat back in his chair to ponder. And he had work to do as well as cause to ponder. The suffering he had witnessed during these last days lay heavy on his heart. His eyes were dim with it; the lines on his face were deep with it. His sympathies were stirred