"Have you been studying this coal strike question at all?" he began.
"I read the papers," said Anne.
"Ah, but you don't get it there. They don't tell you—they don't tell you. Now I know a man who is actually in it, and he says—and he knows this for a fact—that from the moment when the first man downed tools—from the very moment when he downed tools…"
Anne edged away from him nervously. Her face had assumed an expression of wild interest which she was certain couldn't last much longer.
"Now, take coal at the pit's mouth," he went on—"at the pit's mouth"—he shook a forefinger at her—"at the pit's mouth—and I know this for a fact—the royalties, the royalties are—"
"It's awful," said Anne. "I know."
She went home feeling a little disturbed. There was something in her mind, a dim sense of foreboding, which kept casting its shadow across her pleasanter thoughts; "Just as you feel," she said, "when you know you've got to go to the dentist." But they had a big dinner-party that evening, and Anne, full of the joy of life, was not going to let anything stand in the way of her enjoyment of it.
Her man began on the stairs.
"Well," he said, "what about the coal strike? When are you going to start your coal-parties? 'Fire, 10—2.' They say that that's going to be the new rage." He smiled reassuringly at her. He was giving the impression that he could have been very, very serious over this terrible business, but that for her sake he was wearing the mask. In the presence of women a man must make light of danger.
Anne understood then what was troubling her; and as, half-way through dinner, the man on her other side turned to talk to her, she shot an urgent question at him. At any cost she must know the worst.