thing
unusual about her--where did you find her?"

"She found me." And Insall explained. "She was a stenographer, it seems,
but now she's enlisted heart and soul with the syndicalists," he added.

"A history?" Mrs. Maturin queried. "Well, I needn't ask--it's written on
her face."

"That's all I know," said Insall.

"I'd like to know," said Mrs. Maturin. "You say she's in the strike?"

"I should rather put it that the strike is in her."

"What do you mean, Brooks?"

But Insall did not reply.

Janet came away from Dey Street in a state of mental and emotional
confusion. The encounter with Mrs. Brocklehurst had been upsetting; she
had an uneasy feeling of having made a fool of herself in Insall's eyes;
she desired his approval, even on that occasion when she had first
met him and mistaken him for a workman she had been conscious of
a compelling faculty in him, of a pressure he exerted demanding
justification of herself; and to-day, because she was now pledged to
Syndicalism, because she had made the startling discovery that he was a
writer of some renown, she had been more than ever anxious to vindicate
her cause. She found herself, indeed, wondering uneasily whether there
were a higher truth of which he was in possession. And the fact that
his attitude toward her had been one of sympathy and friendliness rather
than of disapproval, that his insight seemed to have fathomed her case,
apprehended it in all but the details, was even more disturbing--yet
vaguely consoling. The consolatory element in the situation was somehow
connected with the lady, his friend from Silliston, to whom he had
introduced her and whose image now came before her the more vividly,
perhaps, in contrast with that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. Mrs. Maturin--could
Janet have so expressed her thought! had appeared as an extension of
Insall's own personality. She was a strong, tall, vital woman with
a sweet irregularity of feature, with a heavy crown of chestnut hair
turning slightly grey, quaintly braided, becomingly framing her face.
Her colour was high. The impression she conveyed of having suffered was
emphasized by the simple mourning gown she wore, but the dominant note
she had struck was one of dependability. It was, after all, Insall's
dominant, too. Insall had asked her to call again; and the reflection
that she might do so was curiously comforting. The soup kitchen in the
loft, with these two presiding over it, took on something of the aspect