My companion did not look at the apartment. Her gaze was fastened on the Anarchist, and a look, now of terror, now of kindling enthusiasm, dilated her eyes.
The difficulty, the Anarchist repeated, was with the women themselves. They would not band together to demand their rights, because they were afraid. They did not want to do anything “unladylike.” It seemed to me that under the flowery and confused style, there was much sound sense in his remarks.
“Now if you,” he said, rising and striding up and down the room, with his long cretonne dressing-gown flapping about his slippered heels, “if you could influence any shop of ill-paid girls to form a union for mutual protection of each other, and to go out on a strike, for their lawful rights, which are theirs, you would be opening the eyes of the captive and letting the maimed and halt and blind go free!”
I do not know whether the Tailoress liked the rhetoric, but the idea had taken possession of her. Her face was illumined by a new inspiration. She looked, with her high cheek bones and her deep-set eyes, like an ancient Sybil about to deliver a solemn message.
The Anarchist seated himself again in his great rocking-chair, and one of the children—a curly-headed boy of four—crept to his knee, and cuddled down on his shoulder.
“More,” coaxed the boy, “more Jack and the Bean-stalk.”
The Anarchist looked up at us with smiling pride.
“Is this a grandchild?” I asked.
“No, no; he belongs to one of my neighbours. The two of ’em come over to play with me since I give up work. I had to do it. What with organizin’ and the conferences and the committee-meetings, I couldn’t get time for no work.”
I did not mean to look inquiringly at my host, but perhaps I did, for he continued:—