o 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 give
you the cause, the religion you need."

She longed to go, and yet she