She was capable of hero worship, which, after all, is the keystone of aristocracies.  But her heroes were not warriors, adventurers, conquerors of the world, conquerors of the world’s wealth.  They were revolutionists.  They were men who gave their lives and their abilities to laboring for labor. ...  Already she was inclining to light the fires of her hero worship at the feet of the man Dulac.

Ruth Frazer’s grin has been spoken of.  It has been described as a grin.  That term may offend some sensitive eye as an epithet applicable only to something common, vulgar.  To smile is proper, may even be aristocratic; only small boys and persons of slack breeding are guilty of the grin. ...  Ruth Frazer’s grin was neither common nor vulgar.  It was warming, encouraging, bright with the flashing of a quick mind, and withal sweet, womanly, delicious.  Yet that it was a grin cannot be denied.  Enemies to the grin must make the most of it.

The grin was to be seen, for Dulac had just entered Ruth’s mother’s parlor, and it glowed for him.  The man seemed out of place in that cottage parlor.  He seemed out of place in any homelike room, in any room not filled by an eager, sweating, radical crowd of men assembled to hang upon his words.  That was the place for him, the place nature had created him to become.  To see him standing alone any place, on the street, in a hotel, affected one with the feeling that he was exotic there, misplaced.  He must be surrounded by his audience to be right.

Something of this crossed Ruth’s mind.  No woman, seeing a possible man, is without her sentimental speculation.  She could not conceive of Dulac in a home.

“It’s been a day!” he said.

“Yes.”

“Every skilled mechanic has struck,” he said, with pride, as in a personal achievement.  “And most of the rest.  To-night four thousand out of their five thousand men were with us.”

“It came so suddenly.  Nobody thought of a strike this morning.”

“We were better organized than they thought,” he said, running his hand through his thick, black hair, and throwing back his head.  “Better than I thought myself. ...  I’ve always said fool employers were the best friends we organizers have.  The placard that young booby slapped the men in the face with—­that did it. ...That and his spying on us last night.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t spying last night.”

“Bosh!  He was mighty quick to try to get our necks under his heel this morning.”

“I don’t know what happened this morning,” she said, slowly.  “I’m his secretary, you know.  Something happened about that placard.  I don’t believe he wanted it to go up.”

“You’re defending him?  Of course.  You’re a girl and you’re close to the throne with a soft job.  He’s a good-looking kid in his namby-pamby Harvard way, too.”

“Mr. Dulac!...My job—­I was going to ask you what I should do.  I want to help the men.  I want them to feel that I’m with them, working for them and praying for them.  Ought I to quit, too—­to join the strike?”