JEALOUSY, CRUEL AS THE GRAVE It was the latter end of April when Sir Robin Drummond presented himself again in the big bare room where Mary Gray transacted the business of her Bureau.

The windows were wide open now, and the dull roar of the distant street traffic came in.

It had been a showery day, and he had noticed as he came up the stairs the many marks of muddy feet which showed that business at the Bureau was brisk.

The women were coming at last to be organised, to learn a spirit of _camaraderie_, to see that their good was the common good, to have hope for a future which would not be always starvation and deprivation, sufferings in cold and heats, intolerable miseries crowding upon each other.
He came up the stairs, looking sadder and sterner than was his wont.

He remembered how all last winter he had run up those stairs like a school-boy, being so glad at last to get to the hour he had desired all day.