Dulac turned slowly around, his back to the crowd, walked to a chair, and, with elbows on knees, he covered his face with his hands.  There was a silence, as men looked at him and appreciated his suffering.  They appreciated his suffering because they appreciated the man, his honesty to their cause, and to his work.  He had been true to them.  For himself he would gain nothing by the success of the strike—­for them he would have gained much. ...  It was not his loss that bowed his head, but their loss—­and they knew it.  He was a Messiah whose mission had failed.

The vote was put.  There was no dissenting voice.  The strike was done, and Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, was victor.

Men clustered about Dulac, wringing his hands, speaking words of comfort with voices that broke, and the number of those who turned away with tears was greater than of those whose eyes could remain dry.

Dulac spoke.  “We’ll try again-men. ...  We’ll start to get ready—­to-day—­for another—­fight.”

Then, hurriedly, blindly, he forced his way through them and made his way out of the hall.  Grief, the heaviness of defeat, was all that he could feel now.  Bitterness would come in its time.

Dulac was a soul without restraints, a soul in eternal uproar.  His life had been one constant kicking against the pricks, and when they hurt his feet he was not schooled to stifle the cry of pain.  He could not endure patiently and in silence; the tumult of his suffering must have an outlet.

Now was the time for an overwrought, overtired man, clothed in no restraint, to try what surcease was to be found in the bottom of a glass.  But Dulac was not a drinking man.  So he walked.  As he walked bitterness awoke, and he cursed under his breath.  Bitterness increased until it was rage, and, as man is so constituted that rage must have a definite object, Dulac unconsciously sought a man who would symbolize all the forces that had defeated him—­and he chose Bonbright Foote.  He chose Bonbright the more readily because he hated the boy for personal reasons.  If Dulae and Bonbright had met at this moment there would have happened events which would have delighted the yellower press.  But they did not meet.  Bonbright was safe in Lightener’s purchasing department, learning certain facts about brass castings.

So Dulac walked and walked, and lashed himself into rage.  Rage abated and became biting disappointment and unspeakable heaviness of heart.  Again rage would be conjured up only to ebb again and to flood again as the hours went by.

There is an instinct in man which, when his troubles become too weighty to bear alone, sends him to a woman.  Perhaps this is the survival of an idea implanted in childhood when baby runs to mother for sure comfort with broken doll or bruised thumb.  It persists and never dies, so that one great duty, one great privilege, one great burden of womankind is to give ear to man’s outpourings of his woes, and to offer such comfort as she may. ...