Rolfe pronounced it, stirred her. And art, painting! It was
a realm unknown to her, and yet the very suggestion of it evoked
yearnings. And she recalled a picture in the window of Hartmann's
book-store, a coloured print before which she used to stop on her way to
and from the office, the copy of a landscape by a California artist. The
steep hillside in the foreground was spread with the misty green of olive
trees, and beyond--far beyond--a snow-covered peak, like some high altar,
flamed red in the sunset. She had not been able to express her feeling
for this picture, it had filled her with joy and sadness. Once she had
ventured to enter and ask its price--ten dollars. And then came a morning
when she had looked for it, and it was gone.

"And your father--did he paint beautiful pictures, too?"

"Ah, he was too much of a socialist. He was always away whey I was a
child, and after my mother's death he used to take me with him. When I
was seventeen we went to Milan to take part in the great strike, and
there I saw the soldiers shooting down the workers by the hundreds,
putting them in prison by the thousands. Then I went to live in England,
among the socialists there, and I learned the printer's trade. When I
first came to this country I was on a labour paper in New York, I set up
type, I wrote articles, and once in a while I addressed meetings on the
East Side. But even before I left London I had read a book on Syndicalism
by one of the great Frenchmen, and after a while I began to realize that
the proletariat would never get anywhere through socialism."

"The proletariat?" The word was new to Janet's ear.

"The great mass of the workers, the oppressed, the people you saw here
to-day. Socialism is not for them. Socialism--political socialism
--betrays them into the hands of the master class. Direct action is the
thing, the general strike, war,--the new creed, the new religion that
will bring salvation. I joined the Industrial Workers of the World that
is the American organization of Syndicalism. I went west, to Colorado and
California and Oregon, I preached to the workers wherever there was an
uprising, I met the leaders, Ritter and Borkum and Antonelli and Jastro
and Nellie Bond, I was useful to them, I understand Syndicalism as they
do not. And now we are here, to sow the seed in the East. Come," he said,
slipping his arm through hers, "I will take you to Headquarters, I will
enlist you, you shall be my recruit. I will