“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?”

She shivered, but was silent.

“Is it not so?” he repeated.  “They have wronged you, too, perhaps,—­they have wronged us all, but some are too stupid, too cowardly to fight and crush them.  Christians and slaves submit.  The old religion teaches that the world is cruel for most of us, but if we are obedient and humble we shall be rewarded in heaven.”  Rolfe laughed.  “The masters approve of that teaching.  They would not have it changed.  But for us it is war.  We’ll strike and keep on striking, we’ll break their machinery, spoil their mills and factories, and drive them out.  And even if we do not win at once, it is better to suffer and die fighting than to have the life ground out of us—­is it not?”

“Yes, it is better!” she agreed.  The passion in her voice did not escape him.

“Some day, perhaps sooner than we think, we shall have the true Armageddon, the general strike, when the last sleeping toiler shall have aroused himself from his lethargy to rise up and come into his inheritance.”  He seemed to detach himself from her, his eyes became more luminous.

“`Like unseen music in the night,’—­so Sorel writes about it.  They may scoff at it, the wise ones, but it will come. `Like music in the night!’ You respond to that!”