Their attempt to make a "dope" out of him had ignominiously failed. He had detected the morphine they had cleverly mixed with his water; and, after his drowsiness and weird dreams had convinced him of the plot, had turned the trick on it by secretly emptying this water out and by drinking only while in the shop, where he could draw water from the faucet. The cell guards' intelligence had been too limited to make them inquire of the brush shop guards about his habits. Also, Gabriel, had feigned stupefaction while in the cell. Thus he had simulated the effects of the drug, and had really thrown his tormentors off the track. For months and months they were convinced that they were weakening his will and destroying his mentality, while as a matter of fact his reasoning powers and determination never had been more keen.
By bathing as often as possible, by taking regular and carefully planned calisthenics, by reading the best books in the prison library, by attention to every rule of health within his means, and by allowing himself no vices, not even his pipe, Gabriel now was emerging from the Bastile of Capitalism in a condition of mind and body so little impaired that he knew a few weeks would entirely restore him. The good conduct allowance, or "copper," which they had been forced to allow him for exemplary conduct, had cut ten months off his sentence. And now in mid-August of 1925, there he stood, a free man again, with purpose still unshaken and with a woman by his side who shared his high ambition and asked no better lot than to work with him toward the one great aim—Socialism!
Now, as these two walked side by side along the sunbaked street of the sweltering Southern town, Gabriel was saying:
"So I haven't changed as much as you expected? I'm glad of that, Kate. Only superficial changes, at most. Just give me a little time to pull together and get my legs under me again, and—forward march! Charge the forts! Eh, Catherine?"
She nodded, smiling. Smiles were rare with her, now. She had grown sober and serious, in these years of work and battle and stern endeavor. The Catherine Flint of the old times had vanished—the Catherine of country club days, and golf and tennis, and the opera—the Catherine of Newport, of the horse show, of Paris, of "society." In her place now lived another and a nobler woman, a woman known and loved the length and breadth of the land, a woman exalted and strengthened by new, high and splendid race-aspirations; by a vision of supernal beauty—the vision of the world for the workers, each for all and all for each!
She had grown more mature and beautiful, with the passing years. No mark of time had yet laid its hand upon her face or figure. Young, still—she was now but five-and-twenty, and Gabriel only twenty-eight—she walked like a goddess, lithe, strong and filled with overflowing vigor. Her eyes glowed with noble enthusiasms; and every thought, every impulse and endeavor now was upward, onward, filled with stimulus and hope and courage.
Thus, a braver, broader and more splendid woman than Gabriel had known in the other days of his first love for her—the days when he had wished her penniless, the days when her prospective millions stood between them—she walked beside him now. And they two, comrades, understood each other; spoke the same language, shared the same aspirations, dreamed the same wondrous dreams. Their smile, as their eyes met, was in itself a benediction and a warm caress.
"Charge the forts!" Gabriel repeated. "Yes, Kate, the battle still goes on, no matter what happens. Here and there, soldiers fall and die. Even battalions perish; but the war continues. When I think of all the fights you've been in, since I was put away, I'm unspeakably envious. You've been through the Tawana Valley strike, the big Consolidated Western lockout and the Imperial Mills massacre. You were a delegate to the 1923 Revolution Congress, in Berlin, and saw the slaughter in Unter den Linden—helped nurse the wounded comrades, inside the Treptow Park barricades. Then, out in California—"
She checked him, with a hand on his arm.
"Please don't, Gabriel," she entreated. "What I have done has been so little, so terribly, pitiably little, compared to what needs to be done! And then remember, too, that in and through all, this thought has run, like the red thread through every cable of the British navy—the thought that in my every activity, I am working against my own father, combatting him, being as it were a traitor and—"