labour and running a plant has that drummed into him hard.  You talk about ordinances, laws—­there are enough laws and ordinances in this city and in this state right now.  If we have any more the mills will have to shut down, and these people will starve—­all of ’em.”  Ditmar’s chair came down on its four legs, and he flung his cigar away.  “Send me a copy of your survey when it’s published.  I’ll look it over.”

“Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?” Ditmar exploded, when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out.  “Comes in here to advise me that it’s my business to look out for the whole city of Hampton.  I’d like to see him up against this low-class European labour trying to run a mill with them.  They’re here one day and there the next, they don’t know what loyalty is.  You’ve got to drive ’em—­if you give ’em an inch they’ll jump at your throat, dynamite your property.  Why, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them if I could depend on them, I’d build ’em houses, I’d have automobiles to take ’em home.  As it is, I do my best, though they don’t deserve it,—­in slack seasons I run half time when I oughtn’t to be running at all.”

His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had been increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the sympathy on which he had counted.  She sat silent, gazing searchingly at his face.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.  “You don’t mean to say you agree with that kind of talk?”

“I was wondering—­” she began.

“What?”

“If you were—­if you could really understand those who are driven to work in order to keep alive?”

“Understand them!  Why not?” he asked.

“Because—­because you’re on top, you’ve always been successful, you’re pretty much your own master—­and that makes it different.  I’m not blaming you—­in your place I’d be the same, I’m sure.  But this man, Siddons, made me think.  I’ve lived like that, you see, I know what it is, in a way.”

“Not like these foreigners!” he protested.

“Oh, almost as bad,” she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped suddenly in his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the startled air of the male who has inadvertently touched off one of the many hidden springs in the feminine emotional mechanism.  “How do you know what it is to live in a squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms that smell of cooking, and not be able to have any of the finer, beautiful things in life?  Unless you’d wanted these things as I’ve wanted them, you couldn’t know.  Oh, I can understand what it would feel like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!”

“You can!” he exclaimed in amazement.  “You!”

“Yes, me.  You don’t understand these people, you couldn’t feel sorry for them any more than you could feel sorry for me.  You want them to run your mills for you, you don’t want to know how they feel or how they live, and you just want me—­for your pleasure.”