“Joe didn’t rouse them.  Some one must.”  She set her feet on the floor, and the deafening thunder of applause seemed to raise her.  She took a step forward.  And then with a queer motion she raised her hand.  There was an appalling silence, a silence more dreadful than the noise, and Myra felt her tongue dry to its root.

“I—­” she began, “I want to say—­tell you—­” She paused, startled by the queer sound of her own voice.  She could not believe it was herself speaking; it seemed some one else.  And then, sharply, a wonderful thing took place.  A surge of strength filled her.  She took a good look around.  Her brain cleared; her heart slowed.  It was the old trick of facing the worst, and finding the strength was there to meet it and turn it to the best.  All at once Myra exulted.  She would take these hundreds of human beings and swing them.  She could do it.

Her voice was rich, vibrating, melodious.

“I want to tell you a little about this strike—­what it means.  I want to tell you what the girls and women of this city are capable of—­what heroism, what toil, what sacrifice and nobility.  It is not the easiest thing to live a normal woman’s life.  You know that.  You know how your mothers or wives or sisters have been slaving and stinting—­what pain is theirs, what burdens, what troubles.  But think of the life of a girl of whom I shall tell you—­a young girl by the name of Rhona Hemlitz.”

She went on.  She told the story of Rhona’s life, and then quietly she turned to her theme.

“You understand now, don’t you?  Are you going to help these girls win their fight?”

The walls trembled with what followed—­stamping, shouting, clapping.  Myra sat down, her cheeks red, her eyes brilliant.  And then suddenly a big hand closed over hers and a deep voice whispered: 

“Myra, you set yourself free then.  You are a new woman!”

That was all.  She had shocked Joe with the fact of the new Myra, and now the new Myra had come to stay.  They raised twenty-five dollars that night.  From that time on Myra was a free and strong personality, surprising even Joe’s mother, who began to realize that this was not the woman to take Joe from his work, but one who would fight shoulder to shoulder with him until the very end.

In the beginning of February the strike began to fade out.  Employers right and left were making compromises with the girls, and here and there girls were deserting the union and going back.  The office at West Tenth Street became less crowded, fewer girls came, fewer committees met.  There was one night when the work was all done at eleven o’clock, and this marked the reappearance of normal conditions.

It was a day or two later that a vital experience came to Joe.  Snow was falling outside, and it was near twilight, and in the quiet Joe was busy at his desk.  Then a man came in, well, but carelessly dressed, his face pinched and haggard, his eyes bloodshot, his hair in stray tufts over his wrinkled forehead.