s by uniting, taking possession of the power that was
rightfully theirs and regulating their own affairs.

She resumed fixing her hair for the night. Her glance bent steadily
downward at one stage of this performance, rested unseeingly upon the
handbill folded printed side out and on top of the contents of the open
drawer. She happened to see two capital letters--S.G.--in a line by
themselves at the end of the print. She repeated them mechanically
several times--"S.G.--S.G.--S.G."--then her hands fell from her hair
upon the handbill. She settled herself to read in earnest.

"Selma Gordon," she said. "That's different."

She would have had some difficulty in explaining to herself why it was
"different." She read closely, concentratedly now. She tried to read
in an attitude of unfriendly criticism, but she could not. A dozen
lines, and the clear, earnest, honest sentences had taken hold of her.
How sensible the statements were, and how obviously true. Why, it
wasn't the writing of an "anarchistic crank" at all--on the contrary,
the writer was if anything more excusing toward the men who were giving
the drivers and motormen a dollar and ten cents a day for fourteen
hours' work--"fourteen hours!" cried Jane, her cheeks burning--yes,
Selma Gordon was more tolerant of the owners of the street car line
than Jane herself would have been.

When Jane had read, she gazed at the print with sad envy in her eyes.
"Selma Gordon can think--and she can write, too," said she half aloud.
"I want to know her--too."

That "too" was the first admission to herself of a curiously intense
desire to meet Victor Dorn.

"Oh, to be in earnest about something! To have a real interest! To
find something to do besides the nursery games disguised under new
forms for the grown-up yet never to be grown-up infants of the world.
And THAT kind of politics doesn't sound shallow and dull. There's
heart in it--and brains--real brains--not merely nasty little
self-seeking cunning." She took up the handbill again and read a
paragraph set in bolder type:

"The reason we of the working class are slaves is because we haven't
intelligence enough to be our own masters, let alone masters of anybody
else. The talk of equality, workingmen, is nonsense to flatter your
silly, ignorant vanity. We are not the equals of our masters. They
know more than we do, and naturally they use that knowledge to make us
work for them. So, even if you win in this s