“I know,” explained Meissner, “but that ain’t what counts.  What you got to have is a dependent wife.  An’ the Gerritys didn’t know that—­Comrade Evelyn held on to her job as stenographer, and somebody must have told on them, for the board jacked him up and cancelled his exemption.  Of course, it was only because he was organizer of the local; they want to put us out of business any way they can.”

“What did Gerrity do?”

“He refused to serve, and they sent a squad of men after him and dragged him away.  They took him to Camp Sheridan, and tried to put him in uniform, and he refused—­he wouldn’t work, he wouldn’t have anything to do with war.  So they tried him and sentenced him to twenty-five years in jail; they put him in solitary confinement, and he gets nothin’ but bread and water—­they keep him chained up by his wrists a part of the time—­”

“Oh!  Oh!” cried Jimmie.

“Comrade Evelyn’s most crazy about it.  She broke down and cried in the local, and she went around to the churches—­they have women’s sewing-circles, you know, and things for the Red Cross, and her and Comrade Mary Allen gets up and makes speeches an’ drives the women crazy.  They arrested ’em once, but they turned ’em loose—­they didn’t want it to get in the papers.”

Comrade Meissner could not have foreseen how this particular news would affect Jimmie; Meissner knew nothing about the strange adventure which had befallen his friend, the amatory convulsion which had shaken his soul.  Before Jimmie’s mind now rose the lovely face with the pert little dimples and the halo of fluffy brown hair; the thought of Comrade Evelyn Baskerville in distress was simply not to be endured.  “Where is she?” he cried.  He had a vision of himself rushing forthwith to take up the agitation; to raid the church sewing-circles and brave the wrath of the she-patriots; to go to jail with Comrade Evelyn; or perhaps—­who could say?—­to put about her, gently and reverently, a pair of fraternal and comforting arms.

Jimmie had the temperament of the dreamer, the idealist, to whom it is enough to want a thing to see that thing forthwith come into being.  His imagination, stimulated by the image of the charming stenographer, rushed forth on the wildest of flights.  He realized for the first time that he was a free man; while, as for Comrade Evelyn, suppose the worst were to happen, suppose Comrade Gerrity were to perish of the diet of bread and water, or to be dragged into the trenches and killed—­then the sorrowing widow would be in need of someone to uphold her, to put fraternal and comforting arms about her—­

“Where is she?” Jimmie asked again; and Comrade Meissner dissipated his dream by replying that she had gone off to work for an organization in New York which was agitating for humane treatment for “conscientious objectors”.  Meissner hunted up the pamphlet published by this organization, telling most hideous stories of the abusing of such victims of the military frenzy; they had been beaten, tortured and starved, subjected to ridicule and humiliation, in many cases dragged before courts-martial and sentenced to imprisonment for twenty or thirty years.  Jimmie sat up a part of the night reading these stories—­with the result that once more the feeble sprout of patriotism was squashed flat in his soul!