“So you’d like to exterminate Mrs. Brocklehurst?” he asked.

And Janet flushed.  “Well, she forced me to say it.”

“Oh, it didn’t hurt her,” he said.

“And it didn’t help her,” Janet responded quickly.

“No, it didn’t help her,” Insall agreed, and laughed.

“But I’m not sure it isn’t true,” she went on, “that we want what she’s got.”  The remark, on her own lips, surprised Janet a little.  She had not really meant to make it.  Insall seemed to have the quality of forcing one to think out loud.

“And what she wants, you’ve got,” he told her.

“What have I got?”

“Perhaps you’ll find out, some day.”

“It may be too late,” she exclaimed.  “If you’d only tell me, it might help.”

“I think it’s something you’ll have to discover for yourself,” he replied, more gravely than was his wont.

She was silent a moment, and then she demanded:  “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?  You let me think, when I met you in Silliston that day, that you were a carpenter.  I didn’t know you’d written books.”

“You can’t expect writers to wear uniforms, like policemen—­though perhaps we ought to, it might be a little fairer to the public,” he said.  “Besides, I am a carpenter, a better carpenter than a writer..”

“I’d give anything to be an author!” she cried.

“It’s a hard life,” he assured her.  “We have to go about seeking inspiration from others.”

“Is that why you came to Hampton?”

“Well, not exactly.  It’s a queer thing about inspiration, you only find it when you’re not looking for it.”

She missed the point of this remark, though his eyes were on her.  They were not like Rolfe’s eyes, insinuating, possessive; they had the anomalistic quality, of being at once personal and impersonal, friendly, alight, evoking curiosity yet compelling trust.

“And you didn’t tell me,” he reproached her, “that you were at I.W.W.  Headquarters.”

A desire for self-justification impelled her to exclaim:  “You don’t believe in Syndicalism—­and yet you’ve come here to feed these children!”

“Oh, I think I understand the strike,” he said.

“How?  Have you seen it?  Have you heard the arguments?”

“No.  I’ve seen you.  You’ve explained it.”

“To Mrs. Brocklehurst?”

“It wasn’t necessary,” he replied—­and immediately added, in semi-serious apology:  “I thought it was admirable, what you said.  If she’d talked to a dozen syndicalist leaders, she couldn’t have had it put more clearly.  Only I’m afraid she doesn’t know the truth when she hears it.”

“Now you’re making fun of me!”

“Indeed I’m not,” he protested.

“But I didn’t give any of the arguments, any of the—­philosophy,” she pronounced the word hesitatingly.  “I don’t understand it yet as well as I should.”

“You are it,” he said.  “It’s not always easy to understand what we are —­it’s generally after we’ve become something else that we comprehend what we have been.”