“Go along; you’re fooling.”

“No, I ain’t.  I mean it, honest.”

“I don’t want to marry anybody yet awhile,” said Nellie Stone; but when Dennison kissed her again she did not repulse him, and even nestled her head with a little caressing motion into the hollow of his shoulder.

Then they both started violently apart as Flynn entered.

“Say!” he proclaimed, “what do you think?  The boss has just told the hands that he’ll split the difference and reduce the wages five instead of ten per cent.”

Chapter LIX

When Robert Lloyd entered the factory that morning he experienced one of those revulsions which come to man in common with all creation.  As the wind can swerve from south to east, and its swerving be a part of the universal scheme of things, so the inconsistency of a human soul can be an integral part of its consistency.  Robert, entering Lloyd’s, flushed with triumph over his workmen, filled also with rage whenever he thought of poor Risley, became suddenly, to all appearances, another man.  However, he was the same man, only he had come under some hidden law of growth.  All at once, as he stood there amidst those whirring and clamping machines, and surveyed those bowed and patient backs and swaying arms of labor, standing aside to allow a man bending before a heavy rack of boots to push it to another department, he realized that his triumph was gone.

Not a man or woman in the factory looked at him.  All continued working with a sort of patient fierceness, as if storming a citadel—­as, indeed, they were in one sense—­and waging incessant and in the end hopeless warfare against the destructive forces of life.  Robert stood in the midst of them, these fellow-beings who had bowed to his will, and saw, as if by some divine revelation, in his foes his brothers and sisters.  He saw Ellen’s fair head before her machine, and she seemed the key-note of a heart-breaking yet ineffable harmony of creation which he heard for the first time.  He was a man whom triumph did not exalt as much as it humiliated.  Who was he to make these men and women do his bidding?  They were working as hard as they had worked for full pay.  Without doubt he would not gain as much comparatively, but he was going to lose nothing actually, and he would not work as these men worked.  He saw himself as he never could have seen himself had the strike continued; and yet, after all, he was not a woman, to be carried away by a sudden wave of generous sentiment and enthusiasm, for his business instincts were too strong, inherited and developed by the force of example.  He could not forget that this had been his uncle’s factory.

He shut his mouth hard, and stood looking at the scene of toil, then he resolved what to do.

He spoke to Flynn, who could not believe his ears, and asked him over.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said.