On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived and interrupted him.  Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to file away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from her work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder.  The two men were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that struck her as dramatic.  Both were vital figures, dominant types which had survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize.  She surveyed Holster critically.  He was short, heavily built, with an almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun.  His nasal voice was complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by gestures.  The veins stood out on his forehead.  She wondered what his history had been.  She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face she was quick to detect a look she had seen before—­a contraction of the eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw.  That look, and the peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a responsive sense of championship.

“All right, Ditmar,” she heard the other exclaim.  “I tell you again you’ll never be able to pull it off.”

Ditmar’s laugh was short, defiant.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Why not!  Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Ditmar demanded.

“You’ll see—­you’ll remember what I told you fellows at the conference after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor insisted on signing it.  I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a fifty-four hour basis we’d have a strike on our hands in every mill in Hampton,—­didn’t I?  I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and make all the other strikes we’ve had here look like fifty cents.  Didn’t I say that?  Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool people.  You remember?  You were the man who stood out against it, and they listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing about it.  Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that law goes into effect.  You’ll see what’ll happen!  You’ll never be able to fill that Bradlaugh order in God’s world.”

“Oh hell,” retorted Ditmar, contemptuously.  “You’re always for lying down, Holster.  Why don’t you hand over your mill to the unions and go to work on a farm?  You might as well, if you’re going to let the unions run the state.  Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony?  When they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to fifty-four and we kept on payin’ ’em for fifty-six, against my advice, what happened?