hingly at
his face.

"What's the matter?" he demanded. "You don't mean to say you agree with
that kind of talk?"

"I was wondering--" she began.

"What?"

"If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to work
in order to keep alive?"

"Understand them! Why not?" he asked.

"Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're
pretty much your own master--and that makes it different. I'm not blaming
you--in your place I'd be the same, I'm sure. But this man, Siddons, made
me think. I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is, in a way."

"Not like these foreigners!" he protested.

"Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped
suddenly in his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the
startled air of the male who has inadvertently touched off one of the
many hidden springs in the feminine emotional mechanism. "How do you know
what it is to live in a squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms that
smell of cooking, and not be able to have any of the finer, beautiful
things in life? Unless you'd wanted these things as I've wanted them, you
couldn't know. Oh, I can understand what it would feel like to strike, to
wish to dynamite men like you!"

"You can!" he exclaimed in amazement. "You!"

"Yes, me. You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for
them any more than you could feel sorry for me. You want them to run your
mills for you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they live, and
you just want me--for your pleasure."

He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in
his experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not
the type of man to be shocked by it. On the contrary, it swept away his
irritation, and as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a
fever heat as he approached and stood over her.

"You little--panther!" he whispered. "You want beautiful things, do you?
Well, I'll give 'em to you. I'll take care of you."

"Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears. "Do
you think I want anybody to take care of me? That shows how little you
know me. I want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I get."

Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings.
Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would
indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of the
red-blo