“Four dollar and a half.”

“You starve now,” Janet declared contemptuously.  “The quicker you join us, the sooner you’ll get a living wage.”

The girl was not quite convinced.  She stood for a while undecided, and then ran abruptly off in the direction of West Street.  Janet sought for others, but they had ceased coming; only the scattered, prowling picketers remained.

Over the black rim of the Clarendon Mill to the eastward the sky had caught fire.  The sun had risen, the bells were ringing riotously, resonantly in the clear, cold air.  Another working day had begun.

Janet, benumbed with cold, yet agitated and trembling because of her unwonted experience of the morning, made her way back to Fillmore Street.  She was prepared to answer any questions her mother might ask; as they ate their dismal breakfast, and Hannah asked no questions, she longed to blurt out where she had been, to announce that she had cast her lot with the strikers, the foreigners, to defend them and declare that these were not to blame for the misfortunes of the family, but men like Ditmar and the owners of the mills, the capitalists.  Her mother, she reflected bitterly, had never once betrayed any concern as to her shattered happiness.  But gradually, as from time to time she glanced covertly at Hannah’s face, her resentment gave way to apprehension.  Hannah did not seem now even to be aware of her presence; this persistent apathy filled her with a dread she did not dare to acknowledge.

“Mother!” she cried at last.

Hannah started.  “Have you finished?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve b’en out in the cold, and you haven’t eaten much.”  Janet fought back her tears.  “Oh yes, I have,” she managed to reply, convinced of the futility of speech, of all attempts to arouse her mother to a realization of the situation.  Perhaps—­though her heart contracted at the thought perhaps it was a merciful thing!  But to live, day after day, in the presence of that comfortless apathy!...  Later in the morning she went out, to walk the streets, and again in the afternoon; and twice she turned her face eastward, in the direction of the Franco-Belgian Hall.  Her courage failed her.  How would these foreigners and the strange leaders who had come to organize them receive her, Ditmar’s stenographer?  She would have to tell them she was Ditmar’s stenographer; they would find it out.  And now she was filled with doubts about Rolfe.  Had he really thought she could be of use to them!  Around the Common, in front of the City Hall men went about their affairs alertly, or stopped one another to talk about the strike.  In Faber Street, indeed, an air of suppressed excitement prevailed, newsboys were shouting out extras; but business went on as though nothing had happened to disturb it.  There was, however, the spectacle, unusual at this time of day, of operatives mingling with the crowd, while policemen stood watchfully at