the bleak lane where stood the Franco-Belgian Hall—­Hampton Headquarters of the Industrial Workers of the World.  She halted a moment at sight of the crowd of strikers loitering in front of it, then went on again, mingling with them excitedly beside the little building.  Its lines were simple and unpretentious, and yet it had an exotic character all its own, differing strongly from the surrounding houses:  it might have been transported from a foreign country and set down here.  As the home of that odd, cooperative society of thrifty and gregarious Belgians it had stimulated her imagination, and once before she had gazed, as now, through the yellowed, lantern-like windows of the little store at the women and children waiting to fill their baskets with the day’s provisions.  In the middle of the building was an entrance leading up to the second floor.  Presently she gathered the courage to enter.  Her heart was pounding as she climbed the dark stairs and thrust open the door, and she stood a moment on the threshold almost choked by the fumes of tobacco, bewildered by the scene within, confused by the noise.  Through a haze of smoke she beheld groups of swarthy foreigners fiercely disputing among themselves—­apparently on the verge of actual combat, while a sprinkling of silent spectators of both sexes stood at the back of the hall.  At the far end was a stage, still set with painted, sylvan scenery, and seated there, alone, above the confusion and the strife, with a calmness, a detachment almost disconcerting, was a stout man with long hair and a loose black tie.  He was smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper which he presently flung down, taking up another from a pile on the table beside him.  Suddenly one of the groups, shouting and gesticulating, surged toward him and made an appeal through their interpreter.  He did not appear to be listening; without so much as lowering his newspaper he spoke a few words in reply, and the group retired, satisfied.  By some incomprehensible power he dominated.  Panting, fascinated, loath to leave yet fearful, Janet watched him, breathing now deeply this atmosphere of smoke, of strife, and turmoil.  She found it grateful, for the strike, the battle was in her own soul as well.  Momentarily she had forgotten Rolfe, who had been in her mind as she had come hither, and then she caught sight of him in a group in the centre of the hall.  He saw her, he was making his way toward her, he was holding her hands, looking down into her face with that air of appropriation, of possession she remembered.  But she felt no resentment now, only a fierce exultation at having dared.

“You’ve come to join us!” he exclaimed.  “I thought I’d lost you.”

He bent closer to her that she might hear.

“We are having a meeting of the Committee,” he said, and she smiled.  Despite her agitation, this struck her as humorous.  And Rolfe smiled back at her.  “You wouldn’t think so, but Antonelli knows how to manage them.  He is a general.  Come, I will enlist you, you shall be my recruit.”