Levine's querulous voice rose above the din of the machines—finding fault with something. A stenographer in a far corner began to count, "One! Two! Three!" Every one in the office, even the linotypers and printer's devil beyond the partition took up the slogan.
"O-o-oh! Cut it out and work for Socialism."
The tense expression on Isadore's face relaxed into a confident grin.
"That's it. You think we need money to run this paper? We're doing it on enthusiasm. And nothing is going to stop us."
"I'll think it over," Yetta said. "If I can't see any chance of helping, I won't stay on the Committee to discourage you. I've got to go up to the League now and make peace with Mabel. I was so busy in Brooklyn last night I forgot all about a speaking engagement she'd made for me."
As she rode uptown Yetta was surprised by a strange revulsion towards her old work and workmates. Why the shattering of her romance should have changed her outlook on life she could not determine. She seemed somehow to have graduated from it all. Even with wings broken a butterfly does not want to crawl back into the chrysalis. All her old life had become abhorrent to her. She hated the steps in front of the League office as she walked up them. She realized that she was dangerously near hating Mabel. More sharply than ever before she felt the chasm between this finely bred upper-class woman and herself. No matter how hard she tried she would never be able to climb entirely out of her sweat-shop past. Jealousy made her unjust. She attributed Walter's preference—which was purely a matter of chance—to this difference in breeding.
Mabel, sitting within at her desk, was in no more cordial a mood. Walter had not called the night before. This had affected her more than she would have believed possible. It seemed typical of the way she was being deserted. A hungry loneliness had been gathering within her of late. The process of growing old seemed to be a gradual sloughing off of the relationships which really counted. Old age with Eleanor was a dreary outlook. She had not had many suitors this last year—none that mattered. As she had sat at home waiting for Walter to call, realizing minute by minute that he was not coming, the loneliness which had been only a hungry ache had changed to an acute pain. She was no more in love with him than before. But—although she had not admitted it to herself in so many words—if he had come, still seeking her, she knew she would have married him out of sheer fright at the doleful prospect of being left alone.
At the office that morning she had found a letter, which he had written the day before. He was sorry to have missed her. He was to be in the country only a few days, was leaving that afternoon for Boston—a collection he wanted to look over in the Harvard Museum—and was sailing from there to England. He told of the Oxford professorship he was accepting, and he was "Very truly yours." He did not even give his Boston address.
It was his formal "adieu." It was the concrete evidence—which is often so distressing, even when the fact is already known—that another chapter was finished.
She had hardly finished this letter when a telephone message had come, asking why Yetta had failed to appear at the meeting. It was a small matter, but it seemed important to Mabel. Yetta, the reliable, the dependable, had failed her. Was this a new desertion?