In the black hours of the morning, with the siren dinning in her ears a hoarse call to war, Janet leaped from her bed and began to dress.  There is a degree of cold so sharp that it seems actually to smell, and as she stole down the stairs and out of the door she shivered, assailed by a sense of loneliness and fear.  Yet an insistent voice urged her on, whispering that to remain at home, inactive, was to go mad; salvation and relief lay in plunging into the struggle, in contributing her share toward retribution and victory.  Victory!  In Faber Street the light of the electric arcs tinged the snow with blue, and the flamboyant advertisements of breakfast foods, cigarettes and ales seemed but the mockery of an activity now unrealizable.  The groups and figures scattered here and there farther down the street served only to exaggerate its wide emptiness.  What could these do, what could she accomplish against the mighty power of the mills?  Gradually, as she stood gazing, she became aware of a beating of feet upon the snow; over her shoulder she caught the gleam of steel.  A squad of soldiers muffled in heavy capes and woolen caps was marching along the car-tracks.  She followed them.  At the corner of West Street, in obedience to a sharp command she saw them halt, turn, and advance toward a small crowd gathered there.  It scattered, only to collect again when the soldiers had passed on.  Janet joined them.  She heard men cursing the soldiers.  The women stood a little aside; some were stamping to keep warm, and one, with a bundle in her arms which Janet presently perceived to be a child, sank down on a stone step and remained there, crouching, resigned.

“We gotta right to stay here, in the street.  We gotta right to live, I guess.”  The girl’s teeth were chattering, but she spoke with such vehemence and spirit as to attract Janet’s attention.  “You worked in the Chippering, like me—­yes?” she asked.

Janet nodded.  The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face.  She smiled, and her white teeth were fairly dazzling.  Impulsively she thrust her arm through Janet’s.

“You American—­you comrade, you come to help?” she asked.

“I’ve never done any picketing.”

“I showa you.”

The dawn had begun to break, revealing little by little the outlines of cruel, ugly buildings, the great mill looming darkly at the end of the street, and Janet found it scarcely believable that only a little while ago she had hurried thither in the mornings with anticipation and joy in her heart, eager to see Ditmar, to be near him!  The sight of two policemen hurrying toward them from the direction of the canal aroused her.  With sullen murmurs the group started to disperse, but the woman with the baby, numb with cold, was slow in rising, and one of the policemen thrust out his club threateningly.

“Move on, you can’t sit here,” he said.