And while she was pondering over this one of the ladies who had been waiting on the table came toward Insall.

“The children have finished, Brooks,” she informed him.  “It’s time to let in the others.”

Insall turned to Janet.  “This is Miss Bumpus—­and this is Mrs. Maturin,” he said.  “Mrs. Maturin lives in Silliston.”

The greeting of this lady differed from that of Mrs. Brocklehurst.  She, too, took Janet’s hand.

“Have you come to help us?” she asked.

And Janet said:  “Oh, I’d like to, but I have other work.”

“Come in and see us again,” said Insall, and Janet, promising, took her leave....

“Who is she, Brooks?” Mrs. Maturin asked, when Janet had gone.

“Well,” he answered, “I don’t know.  What does it matter?”

Mrs. Maturin smiled.

“I should say that it did matter,” she replied.  “But there’s something unusual about her—­where did you find her?”

“She found me.”  And Insall explained.  “She was a stenographer, it seems, but now she’s enlisted heart and soul with the syndicalists,” he added.

“A history?” Mrs. Maturin queried.  “Well, I needn’t ask—­it’s written on her face.”

“That’s all I know,” said Insall.

“I’d like to know,” said Mrs. Maturin.  “You say she’s in the strike?”

“I should rather put it that the strike is in her.”

“What do you mean, Brooks?”

But Insall did not reply.

Janet came away from Dey Street in a state of mental and emotional confusion.  The encounter with Mrs. Brocklehurst had been upsetting; she had an uneasy feeling of having made a fool of herself in Insall’s eyes; she desired his approval, even on that occasion when she had first met him and mistaken him for a workman she had been conscious of a compelling faculty in him, of a pressure he exerted demanding justification of herself; and to-day, because she was now pledged to Syndicalism, because she had made the startling discovery that he was a writer of some renown, she had been more than ever anxious to vindicate her cause.  She found herself, indeed, wondering uneasily whether there were a higher truth of which he was in possession.  And the fact that his attitude toward her had been one of sympathy and friendliness rather than of disapproval, that his insight seemed to have fathomed her case, apprehended it in all but the details, was even more disturbing—­yet vaguely consoling.  The consolatory element in the situation was somehow connected with the lady, his friend from Silliston, to whom he had introduced her and whose image now came before her the more vividly, perhaps, in contrast with that of Mrs. Brocklehurst.  Mrs. Maturin—­could Janet have so expressed her thought! had appeared as an extension of Insall’s own personality.  She was a strong, tall, vital woman with a sweet irregularity of feature, with a heavy crown of chestnut hair turning slightly grey, quaintly braided, becomingly framing