“Yes,” said Bibbs, as faintly.
“You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?”
“Yes,” he gulped.
“But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over.”
He tried to evade her. “Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls—”
“No,” she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. “You said what you did because you think the shop's going to kill you.”
“No, no!”
“Yes, you do think that!” She rose to her feet again and came and stood before him. “Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium. Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm a friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said—and you did mean it, I know it!—you're not going to go back to the sanitarium. The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!”
And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall, splendid in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
“If I mean THAT much to you,” she cried, “they can't harm you! Go back to the shop—but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!”