She found herself saying eagerly: 

“But what else can the people do?”

He shook his head.

“In this country if men only voted right ... only had the right sort of government....  What are they gaining this way?  It’s too costly.”

“But how are they going to vote right?”

“Education!” he exclaimed.  “Training!  We must train the children in democracy.  We must get at the children.”

Myra was amazed.

“Then you think your work is ... of the wrong sort?”

“No! no!” he said.  “Everything helps—­we must try every way—­I may not be fit for any other way than this.  But I’m beginning to think it isn’t of the best sort.  Maybe it’s the only thing to do to-day, however.”

She began to throb with a great hope.

“Don’t you think,” she cried, “you ought to go off and take a rest and think it over?  You know you might go into politics, to Congress, or something—­then you could really do something.”

He looked at her with surprise.

“How you’re thinking these days!” he mused.  But then he went on very wearily.  “Rest?  Myra,” his voice sank, “if I ever come out of this alive, I’ll rest—­rest deep, rest deep.  But there’s no end—­no end to it....”

He reverted to the problem of the strike.

“Don’t you think there’s right on the other side, too?  Don’t you think many of the employers are doing all they can under present conditions?  We’re asking too much.  We want men to change their methods before we change conditions.  Who can do it?  I tell you, I may be wronging as fine a lot of men as there are.”

“Then why did you go into it?” she asked, quickly.

“I didn’t.  It came to me.  It bore me under.  But I haven’t made a mistake this time.  By chance I’m on the righter side, the better side.  When it comes to the women in industry, there’s no question.  It is killing the future to work them this way—­it is intolerable, inhuman, insane.  We must stop it—­and as we don’t vote right, we must strike.  A strike is justified these days—­will be, until there’s some other way of getting justice.  Anyway, this time,” he said, fiercely, “I’m right.  But I’m wondering about the future.  I’m wondering....”

He said nothing further, digging again at his notes.  But Myra now nourished a hope, a secret throbbing hope ... the first ray of a new and more confident morning.

XII

CONFIDENT MORNING

Myra moved down to West Tenth Street.  She found a neat, little hall bedroom in one of the three-story brick houses—­a little white room, white-curtained, white-walled, with white counterpane on the iron bed.  She was well content with these narrow quarters, content because it was near Joe, content because it saved money (her savings were dwindling rapidly these days), and finally content because she had shifted the center