mendous impression of freedom as they
laughed and chatted with the women. For there were women, ranging from
the redoubtable Nellie Bond herself down to those who may be designated
as camp-followers. Rolfe, as he led Janet to a table in a corner of the
room, greeted his associates with easy camaraderie. From Miss Bond he
received an illuminating smile. Janet wondered at her striking good
looks, at the boldness and abandon with which she talked to Jastro or
exchanged sallies across the room. The atmosphere of this tawdry resort,
formerly frequented by shop girls and travelling salesmen, was
magically transformed by the presence of this company, made bohemian,
cosmopolitan, exhilarating. And Janet, her face flushed, sat gazing at
the scene, while Rolfe consulted the bill of fare and chose a beefsteak
and French fried potatoes. The apathetic waiter in the soiled linen
jacket he addressed as "comrade." Janet protested when he ordered
cocktails.

"You must learn to live, to relax, to enjoy yourself," he declared.

But a horror of liquor held her firm in her refusal. Rolfe drank his,
and while they awaited the beefsteak she was silent, the prey of
certain misgivings that suddenly assailed her. Lise, she remembered, had
sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was
struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the
strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict
in the streets, the suffering in the tenements. She glanced at Rolfe,
noting the manner in which he smoked cigarettes, sensually, as though
seeking to wring out of each all there was to be got before flinging
it down and lighting another. Again she was struck by the anomaly of
a religion that had indeed enthusiasms, sacrifices perhaps, but no
disciplines. He threw it out in snatches, this religion, while relating
the histories of certain persons in the room: of Jastro, for instance,
letting fall a hint to the effect that this evangelist and bliss Bond
were dwelling together in more than amity.

"Then you don't believe in marriage?" she demanded, suddenly.

Rolfe laughed.

"What is it," he exclaimed, "but the survival of the system of property?
It's slavery, taboo, a device upheld by the master class to keep women
in bondage, in superstition, by inducing them to accept it as a decree
of God."

"Did the masters themselves ever respect it, or any other decrees of God
they preached to the slaves? Read