"Elwell sounded the horn right in the midst of a group of factory girls to-night," she said. "We were in a tearing hurry and we didn't see them. And one of them stood still, right in the road, and she said, 'You go round me.' Why, she might have been killed! and then we should have been arrested. Elwell had all he could do to swing the car." All of a sudden come to me the picture of those girls--the girls I knew, tracking home at night, dog-tired, dead-tired, from ten hours on their feet and going home to what they was going home to. I saw 'em with my heart--Rose and all the rest that I knew and that I didn't know. And the table I was to, and the lights and the glass, blurred off. Something in my head did something. I had just sense enough not to say anything, for I knew I couldn't say enough, or say it right so's I could make it mean anything. But I shoved back my chair, and I walked out the door. In the hall I ran. I got the front door open, and I got out on the porch. I wanted to be away from there. What right did I have to be there, anyhow? And while I stood there with the wind biting down on me, all of a sudden it wasn't only Rose and Nettie and the girls I saw, but it was Mother, too--Mother when I'd used to call her "Ma." Mr. Gerald was by me in a minute. "Miss Cosma," he said, "what is it?" He took my arm--in that wonderful, taking-care way that is so dear in a man, when it is--and he drew me back into the vestibule. "If she speaks like that about those girls again," I said, "I'll throw my glass of water at her." I hated him for what he said. What he said was: "By jove! You are magnificent!" It took all the strength out of me. "None of you see it," I said. "I don't know what I'm here for. I don't belong here. I belong out there in the road with those girls that the car plowed through." "I don't know about that," he said. "Why don't you stay here and teach me something about them? I don't even know what you mean." He put me in a chair by the fire, and they sent me some coffee there. I heard him explaining that I felt a little faint. I wanted to yell, "It's a lie." I knew, then, that I was a savage--all the pretty little smooth things they used to cover up with, I wanted to rip up and throw at all of them. "I hate it here," I thought. "I hate the factory. I hate home. I hate Luke...."