"Yes; I wanted her to come and live with us but she wouldn't. Then Harry got her a better situation in one of the government departments. You know how those things are fixed. But she wouldn't have it. You see she is trying to get the girls into unions."
"Then she is in the movement?" asked Geisner, looking up quickly.
Mrs. Stratton lifted her eye-brows. "In the movement! Why, haven't you understood? My dear Geisner, here we've been talking for fifteen minutes and—there's Nellie's ring. Harry, go and open the door while I pour the coffee."
The opera cloak dropped from her bare shoulders as she rose from the stool. She had fine shoulders, and altogether was of fashionable appearance, excepting that there was about her the impalpable, but none the less pronounced, air of the woman who associates with men as a comrade. As she crossed the room to the verandah she stopped beside the gloomy young man, who had said nothing. He looked up at her affectionately.
"You are wrong to worry," she said, softly. "Besides, it makes you bad company. You haven't spoken to a soul since we came in. For a punishment come and cut the lemon."
They went out on to the verandah together, her hand resting on his arm. There, on a broad shelf, a kettle of water was already boiling over a gas stove.
"What are you thinking of," she chattered. "We shall have some more of your ferocious poetry, I suppose. I notice that about you, Arty. Whenever you get into your blue fits you always pour out blood and thunder verses. The bluer you are the more volcanic you get. When you have it really bad you simply breathe dynamite, barricades, brimstone, everything that is emphatic. What is it this time?"
He laughed. "Why won't you let a man stay blue when he feels like it?"
She did not seem to think an answer necessary, either to his question or her own. "Have you a match?" she went on. "Ah! There is one thing in which a man is superior to woman. He can generally get a light without running all over the house. That is so useful of him. It's his one good point. I can't imagine how any woman can tolerate a man who doesn't smoke. I suppose one gets used to it, though."
He laughed again, turning up the gas-jet he had lighted, which flickered in the puffs of wind that came off the water below. "I could tell you a good story about that."