excitement, and there were traces of tears on it. "You must think me
almost crazy to stop you in the street this way; but when I caught sight
of you I had to speak. I knew you would sympathize--I knew you would feel
as I do. Oh, how can anybody help honoring those poor men for standing by
one another as they do? They are risking all they have in the world for
the sake of justice! Oh, they are true heroes! They are staking the bread
of their wives and children on the dreadful chance they've taken! But no
one seems to understand it. No one seems to see that they are willing to
suffer more now that other poor men may suffer less hereafter. And those
wretched creatures that are coming in to take their places--those
traitors--"

"We can't blame them for wanting to earn a living, Miss Vance," said
Conrad.

"No, no! I don't blame them. Who am I, to do such a thing? It's
we--people like me, of my class--who make the poor betray one another.
But this dreadful fighting--this hideous paper is full of it!" She held
up an extra, crumpled with her nervous reading. "Can't something be done
to stop it? Don't you think that if some one went among them, and tried
to make them see how perfectly hopeless it was to resist the companies
and drive off the new men, he might do some good? I have wanted to go and
try; but I am a woman, and I mustn't! I shouldn't be afraid of the
strikers, but I'm afraid of what people would say!" Conrad kept pressing
his handkerchief to the cut in his temple, which he thought might be
bleeding, and now she noticed this. "Are you hurt, Mr. Dryfoos? You look
so pale."

"No, it's nothing--a little scratch I've got."

"Indeed, you look pale. Have you a carriage? How will you get home? Will
you get in here with me and let me drive you?"

"No, no," said Conrad, smiling at her excitement. "I'm perfectly well--"

"And you don't think I'm foolish and wicked for stopping you here and
talking in this way? But I know you feel as I do!"

"Yes, I feel as you do. You are right--right in every way--I mustn't keep
you--Good-bye." He stepped back to bow, but she put her beautiful hand
out of the window, and when he took it she wrung his hand hard.

"Thank you, thank you! You are good and you are just! But no one can do
anything. It's useless!"

The type of irreproachable coachman on the box whose respectability had
suffered through the strange behavior of his mistress in this interview
drove quickly off at her signal, a