“It’s the strike,” she explained excitedly, evidently surprised at the question.  “The Polaks and the Dagoes and a lot of other foreigners quit when they got their envelopes—­stopped their looms and started through the mill, and when they came into our room I left.  I didn’t want no trouble with ’em.  It’s the fifty-four hour law—­their pay’s cut two hours.  You’ve heard about it, I guess.”

Janet nodded.

“They had a big mass meeting last night in Maxwell Hall,” the girl continued, “the foreigners—­not the skilled workers.  And they voted to strike.  They tell me they’re walking out over at the Patuxent, too.”

“And the Chippering?” asked Janet, eagerly.

“I don’t know—­I guess it’ll spread to all of ’em, the way these foreigners are going on—­they’re crazy.  But say,” the girl added, “it ain’t right to cut our pay, either, is it?  They never done it two years ago when the law came down to fifty-six.”

Janet did not wait to reply.  While listening to this explanation, excitement had been growing in her again, and some fearful, overpowering force of attraction emanating from that swarm in the distance drew her until she yielded, fairly running past the rows of Italian tenements in their strange setting of snow, not to pause until she reached the fruit shop where she and Eda had eaten the olives.  Now she was on the outskirts of the crowd that packed itself against the gates of the Clarendon.  It spread over the width of East Street, growing larger every minute, until presently she was hemmed in.  Here and there hoarse shouts of approval and cheers arose in response to invisible orators haranging their audiences in weird, foreign tongues; tiny American flags were waved; and suddenly, in one of those unforeseen and incomprehensible movements to which mobs are subject, a trolley car standing at the end of the Hawthorne Street track was surrounded, the desperate clanging of its bell keeping pace with the beating of Janet’s heart.  A dark Sicilian, holding aloft the green, red, and white flag of Italy, leaped on the rear platform and began to speak, the Slav conductor regarding him stupidly, pulling the bellcord the while.  Three or four policemen fought their way to the spot, striving to clear the tracks, bewildered and impotent in the face of the alien horde momentarily growing more and more conscious of power.

Janet pushed her way deeper and deeper into the crowd.  She wanted to savour to the full its wrath and danger, to surrender herself to be played upon by these sallow, stubby-bearded exhorters, whose menacing tones and passionate gestures made a grateful appeal, whose wild, musical words, just because they were uncomprehended, aroused in her dim suggestions of a race-experience not her own, but in which she was now somehow summoned to share.  That these were the intruders whom she, as a native American, had once resented and despised did not occur to her.  The racial sense so strong