y the sedition had spread about
the city until a great night in Cooper Union, when, after speeches of
peace and conciliation, one of the girls had risen, demanded and secured
the floor, and moved a general strike. Her motion was unanimously
carried, and when the chairman cried, in Yiddish: "Do you mean faith?
Will you take the old Jewish oath?" up went two thousand hands, with one
great chorus:

"If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from
the arm I now raise."

By this oath Rhona was bound. And so were thirty thousand
others--Americans, Italians, Jews--and with them were some of the
up-town women, some of the women of wealth, some of the big lawyers and
the labor-leaders and reformers.

"Some of the up-town women!" thought Myra. She was amazed to find
herself so interested, so wrought up. And she felt as if she had
stumbled upon great issues and great struggles; she realized, dimly,
that first moment, that this strike was involved in something larger,
something vaster--swallowed up in the advance of democracy, in the
advance of woman. All the woman in her responded to the call to arms.

And she was discovering now what Joe had meant by his "crisis"--what he
had meant by his fight for "more democracy; a better and richer life; a
superber people on earth. It was a real thing. She burned now to help
Joe--she burned to do for him--to enter into his tragic struggle--to be
of use to him.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked Rhona.

"Now? Now I must go picketing."

"What's picketing?"

"March up and down in front of a factory and try to keep scabs out."

"What are scabs?" asked ignorant Myra.

Rhona was amazed.

"You don't even know that? Why, a scab's a girl who tries to take a
striker's job and so ruin the strike. She takes the bread out of our
mouths."

"But how can you stop her?"

"Talk to her! We're not allowed to use violence."

"How do you do it?"

Rhona looked at the eager face, the luminous gray eyes.

"Would you like to see it?"

"Yes, I would."

"But it's dangerous."

"How so?"

"Police and thugs, bums hanging around."

"And you girls aren't afraid?"

Rhona smiled.

"We don't show it, anyway. You see, we're bound to win."

Myra's eyes flashed.

"Well, if you're not afraid, I guess I haven't any right to be. May I
come?"

Rhona looked at her with swift understanding.

"Yes, please do come!"

Myra rose. She took a last look about the darkening