with a sense of the world’s wrongs.  Ditmar, who was to have led her out of captivity, had only thrust her the deeper into bondage....  She joined the group, halting on the edge of it, listening.  Rolfe was arguing with a man about the labour unions, but almost at once she knew she had fixed his attention.  From time to time, as he talked, his eyes sought hers boldly, and in their dark pupils were tiny points of light that stirred and confused her, made her wonder what was behind them, in his soul.  When he had finished his argument, he singled her out.

“You do not work in the mills?” he asked.

“No, I’m a stenographer—­or I was one.”

“And now?”

“I’ve given up my place.”

“You want to join us?”

“I was interested in what you said.  I never heard anything like it before.”

He looked at her intently.

“Come, let us walk a little way,” he said.  And she went along by his side, through the Common, feeling a neophyte’s excitement in the freemasonry, the contempt for petty conventions of this newly achieved doctrine of brotherhood.  “I will give you things to read, you shall be one of us.”

“I’m afraid I shouldn’t understand them,” Janet replied.  “I’ve read so little.”

“Oh, you will understand,” he assured her, easily.  “There is too much learning, too much reason and intelligence in the world, too little impulse and feeling, intuition.  Where do reason and intelligence lead us?  To selfishness, to thirst for power-straight into the master class.  They separate us from the mass of humanity.  No, our fight is against those who claim more enlightenment than their fellowmen, who control the public schools and impose reason on our children, because reason leads to submission, makes us content with our station in life.  The true syndicalist is an artist, a revolutionist!” he cried.

Janet found this bewildering and yet through it seemed to shine for her a gleam of light.  Her excitement grew.  Never before had she been in the presence of one who talked like this, with such assurance and ease.  And the fact that he despised knowledge, yet possessed it, lent him glamour.

“But you have studied!” she exclaimed.

“Oh yes, I have studied,” he replied, with a touch of weariness, “only to learn that life is simple, after all, and that what is needed for the social order is simple.  We have only to take what belongs to us, we who work, to follow our feelings, our inclinations.”

“You would take possession of the mills?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said quickly, “of all wealth, and of the government.  There would be no government—­we should not need it.  A little courage is all that is necessary, and we come into our own.  You are a stenographer, you say.  But you—­you are not content, I can see it in your face, in your eyes.  You have cause to hate them, too, these masters, or you would not have been herein this place, to-day.  Is it not so?”