her imaginative match-making made her smile, and she thought:  “Joe won’t pick a mate with his head.  The thing will just happen to him—­or not.”  And as she came to know Myra better, she began to feel that possibly a woman who would take Joe away from his work, instead of involving him deeper, would, in the end, be best for him.  Such a woman would mean peace, relaxation, diversion.  She was greatly concerned over Joe’s absorption in the strike, and once, when it appeared that the struggle might go on endlessly, she said to Myra: 

“Sometimes I think Joe puts life off too much, pushing his joys into the future, not always remembering that he will never be more alive than now, and that the days are being lopped off.”

Myra had a little table of her own, near the door, and this table, when she was there, was always a busy center.  The girls liked her, liked to talk with her, were fond of her musical voice and her quiet manners.  Some even got in the habit of visiting her room with her and having quiet talks about their lives.  Sally, however, did not share this fondness for Myra.  She felt that Myra was an intruder—­that Myra was interposing a wall between her and Joe—­and she resented the intrusion.  She could not help noticing that Joe was becoming more and more impersonal with her, but then, she thought, “people are not persons to him any more; he’s swallowed up in the cause.”  Luckily she was too busy during the day, too tired at night, to brood much on the matter.  However, one evening at committee meeting, her moment of realization came.  The committee, including Myra and Joe and herself and some five others, were sitting about the hot stove, discussing the call of a Local on the East Side for a capable organizer.

“It’s hard to spare any one,” mused Joe, “and yet—­” He looked about the circle.  “There’s Miss Craig and—­Miss Heffer.”

Both Myra and Sally turned pale and trembled a little.  Each felt as if the moment had come when he would shut one or the other out of his life.  Sally spoke in a low voice: 

“I’m pretty busy right here, Mr. Joe.”

“I know,” he reflected.  “And I guess Miss Craig could do it.”

He opened the stove door, took the tiny shovel, stuck it into the coal-box, and threw some fresh coal on the lividly red embers.  Then he stood up and gazed round the circle again.

“Sally,” he said, “it’s your work—­you’ll have to go.”

She bowed her head.

“You’re sure,” she murmured, “I’m not needed here?”

“Needed?” he mused.  “Yes.  But needed more over there!”

She looked up at him and met his eyes.  Her own were pleading with him.

“Surely?”

“Surely, Sally.  We’re not in this game for fun, are we?”

“I’ll do as you say,” she breathed.

Her head began to swim; she felt as if she would break down and cry.  She arose.

“I’ll be right back.”