This, then, is the greatest victory of life:  to treat death as a mere incident in the adventure; an emigration to a new country; a brief and tragic “auf wiedersehen.”  It has its pang of parting, and its pain of new birth—­all birth is a struggle full of pain—­but it is the only door to the future.  Well for Joe’s mother that her hand was ready to grasp the dark knob and turn it when the time came.

Once as she and Joe’s mother were snatching a lunch together in the kitchen, the elder woman spoke softly: 

“Myra, you’re a great girl!” (She persisted in calling Myra a girl, though Myra kept telling her she was nearly thirty-three and old enough to be dignified.) “What will I ever do without you when the strike is over?”

Myra smiled.

“Is it as bad as that?”

“Yes, and getting worse, Myra!”

Myra flushed with joy.

“I’m glad.  I’m very glad.”

Joe’s mother watched her a little.

“How have you been feeling, Myra?”

“I?—­” Myra was surprised.  “Oh, I’m all right!  I haven’t time to be unwell.”

“You really think you’re all right, then?”

“Oh, I know it!  This busy life is doing me good.”

“It does most of us good.”  She changed the subject.

Myra felt, with great happiness, that she was coming into harmony with Joe’s mother.  She would have been quite amazed, however, to know that Joe’s mother was secretly struggling to adjust herself.  For Joe’s mother could not help thinking that the time might come when Joe and Myra would marry, and she was schooling herself for this momentous change.  She kept telling herself:  “There is no one in the world I ought to love more than the woman that Joe loves and weds.”  And yet it was hard to release her son, to take that life which had for years been closest to her, and had been partly in her hands, relinquish it and give it over into the keeping of another.  There were times, however, when she pitied Myra, pitied her because Joe was engrossed in his work and had no emotions or thoughts to spare.  And she wondered at such times whether Joe would ever marry, whether he would ever be willing to make his life still more complex.  She watched Myra closely, with growing admiration; saw the changes in her, the faithful struggle, the on-surging power, and she thought: 

“If it’s to be any one, I know no one I should love more.”

There were times, however, when she mentally set Myra side by side with Sally, to the former’s overshadowing.  Sally was so clean-cut, direct, such a positive character.  She was hardy and self-contained, and would never be dependent.  Her relationships with Joe always implied interdependence, a perfect give and take, a close yet easy comradeship which enabled her at any time to go her own way and work her own will.  Sometimes Joe’s mother felt that Sally was a woman of the future, and that, with such, marriage would become a finer and freer union.  However,