That next day was as a dream to Rhona. Not until evening did it become real. Breakfast was brought to her cell, but she did not taste it. Next she was led out by a policeman to the street and packed in the patrol wagon with eight other women. The morning was gray, with a hard sifting snow, and as the wagon bumped over cobblestones, Rhona breathed deep of the keen air.

The ride seemed without end; but next she was in a ferry; and then, last, was hurried into a long gray building on Blackwells Island.

Her cell was fairly large, and contained two cots, one against each wall. She was left disconsolately alone, numb, in despair, and moving about in a dream.

But after supper she found herself locked in with another woman. She sat down on the edge of her cot, in the dim light of the room, and with a sharp glance, half fear, half curiosity, regarded her room-mate. This other was a woman of possibly thirty years, with sallow cheeks, bright burning eyes, and straggly hair. She stood before the little wall mirror, apparently examining herself. Suddenly she turned:

"What you looking at, kid?"

Rhona averted her eyes.

"I didn't mean—"

"Say," said the other, "ain't I the awful thing? Not a rat or a puff or a dab of rouge allowed in these here premises. I do look a sight—a fright. Gee!" She turned. "You're not so worse. A little pale, kid."

She came over and sat next to Rhona.

"What'll I call you?"

Rhona shrank. She was a sensitive, ignorant girl, and did not understand this type of woman. Something coarse, familiar, vulgar seemed to grate against her.

"Rhona's my name," she breathed.

"Well, that's cute! Call you Ronie?" She stretched out her arms. "Oh, slats! I'd give my teeth for a cigarette and a Manhattan cocktail. Wouldn't I, though!"

Rhona shuddered.

The woman turned toward her.

"My name's Millie. Now we're pals, eh?" Then she rattled on: "First time in the workhouse? Comes hard at first, doesn't it? Cut off from friends and fun—and ain't the work beastly? Say, Ronie, what's your job in little old New York?"

Rhona swallowed a dull sob.

"I haven't any—we're on strike."

Millie jumped up.

"What, you one of them shirtwaist strikers?"

"Yes."

"Why did they run you in?"

"An officer struck me, and then said I struck him."

"Just like a man! Oh, I know men! Depend upon it, I know the men! So, you were a shirt-waist-maker. How much d'yer earn?"

"Oh, about five or six a week."

"A—week!" Millie whistled. "And I suppose ten hours a day, or worse, and I suppose work that would kill an ox."

"Yes," said Rhona, "hard work."

Millie sat down and put an arm about the shrinking girl.

"Say, kiddie, I like you. I'm going to chuck a little horse sense at you. Now you listen to me. My sister worked in a pickle-place over in Pennsy, and she lasted just two years, and then, galloping consumption, and—" She snapped her fingers, her voice became husky. "Poor fool! Two years is the limit where she worked. And who paid the rent? I did. But of course I wasn't respectable—oh no! I was a sinner. Well, let me tell you something. In my business a woman can last five to ten years. Do you blame me? And I get clothes, and the eats, and the soft spots, and I live like a lady…. That's the thing for you! Why do you wear yourself out—slave-work and strikes and silly business?… You'll never get married…. The work will make you a hag in another year or two, and who will want you? And say, you've got to live just once—got to be just downright woman for a little spell, anyway…. Come with me, kid … my kind of life."

Rhona looked at her terrified. She did not understand. What sort of woman was this? How live in luxury without working? How be downright woman?

"What do you mean?" asked the young girl.

So Millie told her. They went to bed, their light was put out, and neither had a wink of sleep. Rhona lay staring in the darkness and over the room came the soft whisper of Millie bearing a flood of the filth of the underworld. Rhona could not resist it. She lay helpless, quaking with a wild horror…. Later she remembered that night in Russia when she and others hid under the corn in a barn while the mob searched over their heads—a moment ghastly with impending mutilation and death—and she felt that this night was more terrible than that. Her girlhood seemed torn to shreds…. Dawn broke, a watery glimmer through the high barred window. Rhona rose from her bed, rushed to the door, pulled on the bars, and loosed a fearful shriek. The guard, running down, Millie, leaping forward, both cried:

"What's the matter?"

But the slim figure in the white nightgown fell down on the floor, and thus earned a few hours in the hospital.

* * * * *

They set her to scrubbing floors next day, a work for which she had neither experience nor strength. Weary, weary day—the large rhythm of the scrubbing-brush, the bending of the back, the sloppy, dirty floors—on and on, minute after minute, on through the endless hours. She tried to work diligently, though she was dizzy and sick, and felt as if she were breaking to pieces. Feverishly she kept on. Lunch was tasteless to her; so was supper; and after supper came Millie.

No one can tell of those nights when the young girl was locked in with a hard prostitute—nights, true, of lessening horror, and so, all the more horrible. As Rhona came to realize that she was growing accustomed to Millie's talk—even to the point of laughing at the jokes—she was aghast at the dark spaces beneath her and within her. She was becoming a different sort of being—she looked back on the hard-toiling girl, who worked so faithfully, who tried to study, who had a quiet home, whose day was an innocent routine of toil and meals and talk and sleep, as on some one who was beautiful and lovely, but now dead. In her place was a sharp, cynical young woman. Well for Rhona that her sentence was but five days!

The next afternoon she was scrubbing down the long corridor between the cells when the matron came, jangling her keys.

"Some one here for you," said the matron.

Rhona leaped up.

"My mother?" she cried out, in a piercing voice.

"See here," said the matron, "you want to go easy—and only five minutes, mind you."

"My mother?" Rhona repeated, her heart near to bursting.

"No—some one else. Come along."

Rhona followed, half choking. The big door was unlocked before her and swung open; she peered out. It was Joe and Myra.

Seeing these faces of friends suddenly recalled her to her old world, to the struggle, the heroism, the strike, and, filled with a sense of her imprisonment and its injustice, she rushed blindly out into the open arms of Myra and was clutched close, close.

And then she sobbed, wept for minutes, purifying tears. And suddenly she had an inspiration, a flash of the meaning of her martyrdom, how it could be used as a fire and a torch to kindle and lead the others.

She lifted up her face.

"You tell the girls," she cried, "it's perfectly wonderful to be here. It's all right. Just you tell them it's all right. Any of them would be glad to do it!"

And then the matron, who was listening, stepped forward.

"Time's up!"

There was one kiss, one hug, and the brave girl was led away. The door slammed her in.

Joe and Myra looked at each other, awed, thrilled. Tears trickled down
Myra's face.

"Oh," she cried low, "isn't it lovely? Isn't it wonderful?"

He spoke softly.

"The day of miracles isn't over. Women keep on amazing me. Come!"

Quietly they walked out into the warm, sunshiny day. Streaks of snow were vanishing in visible steam. The sky was a soft blue, bulbous with little puffs of cloud. Myra felt an ineffable peace. Rhona's heroism had filled her with a new sense of human power. She longed to speak with Joe—she longed, as they stood on the ferry, and glided softly through the wash and sway of the East River, to share her sweet emotions with him. But he had pulled out a note-book and was busily making jottings. He seemed, if anything, more worn than ever, more tired. He was living on his nerves. The gray face was enough to bring tears to a woman's eyes, and the lank, ill-clothed form seemed in danger of thinning away to nothingness. So Myra said nothing, but kept looking at him, trying to save him by her strength of love, trying to send out those warm currents and wrap him up and infuse him with life and light and joy.

All the way out he had been silent, preoccupied. In fact, all these three days he had been preoccupied—toiling terribly early and late, busy, the center of a swarm of human activities, his voice everywhere, his pen in his hand. Meals he ate at his desk while he wrote, and sleep was gained in little snatches. Myra had been there to watch him, there to help him. Since that night in the court, she had come early and stayed until ten in the evening, doing what work she could. And there was much to be done—she found a profitable task in instructing new recruits in the rules of picketing—and also in investigating cases of need. These took her to strange places. She had vistas of life she had not dreamed to be true—misery she had thought confined to novels, to books like Les MisÉrables. It was all wonderful and strange and new. She was beginning to really know the life of the Greater Number—the life of the Nine-Tenths—and as she got used to the dust, the smells, and the squalor, she found daily all the richness of human nature. It was dramatic, absorbing, real. Where was it leading her? She hardly knew yet. The strangeness had not worn off.

She had been watching Joe, and she felt that he was hardly aware of her presence. He took her and her work as a matter of course. And this did not embitter her, for she felt that the time had passed for privileges, that this was a season in Joe's life when he belonged to a mass of the people, to a great cause, and that she had no right to any part of his life. He was so deep in it, so overwrought, that it was best to let him alone, to keep him free from the responsibility of personal relationships, not to burden him with added emotionalism. And so she accepted the rule of Joe's mother—to do Joe's bidding without question, to let him have his way, waiting patiently for the time when he would need and cry out for the personal. When that time came the two women were ready to help to heal, to nurse—to bind the wounds and soothe the troubled heart, and rebuild the broken spirit. It might be, of course, that in the end he would shut Myra out; that was a contingency she had to face; but she thought that, whatever came, she was getting herself equal to it.

They left the ferry and walked over to Second Avenue and took an elevated train. Then Joe spoke—leaning near, his voice gentle:

"Myra."

"Yes, Joe."

"I've been wondering."

"What?"

"About this strike business. Wondering if it isn't mostly waste."

She found herself saying eagerly:

"But what else can the people do?"

He shook his head.

"In this country if men only voted right … only had the right sort of government…. What are they gaining this way? It's too costly."

"But how are they going to vote right?"

"Education!" he exclaimed. "Training! We must train the children in democracy. We must get at the children."

Myra was amazed.

"Then you think your work is … of the wrong sort?"

"No! no!" he said. "Everything helps—we must try every way—I may not be fit for any other way than this. But I'm beginning to think it isn't of the best sort. Maybe it's the only thing to do to-day, however."

She began to throb with a great hope.

"Don't you think," she cried, "you ought to go off and take a rest and think it over? You know you might go into politics, to Congress, or something—then you could really do something."

He looked at her with surprise.

"How you're thinking these days!" he mused. But then he went on very wearily. "Rest? Myra," his voice sank, "if I ever come out of this alive, I'll rest—rest deep, rest deep. But there's no end—no end to it…."

He reverted to the problem of the strike.

"Don't you think there's right on the other side, too? Don't you think many of the employers are doing all they can under present conditions? We're asking too much. We want men to change their methods before we change conditions. Who can do it? I tell you, I may be wronging as fine a lot of men as there are."

"Then why did you go into it?" she asked, quickly.

"I didn't. It came to me. It bore me under. But I haven't made a mistake this time. By chance I'm on the righter side, the better side. When it comes to the women in industry, there's no question. It is killing the future to work them this way—it is intolerable, inhuman, insane. We must stop it—and as we don't vote right, we must strike. A strike is justified these days—will be, until there's some other way of getting justice. Anyway, this time," he said, fiercely, "I'm right. But I'm wondering about the future. I'm wondering…."

He said nothing further, digging again at his notes. But Myra now nourished a hope, a secret throbbing hope … the first ray of a new and more confident morning.