In the months which were left to her time, Nina went about the Teepee—singing. The wonder grew in her eyes, as did also the certainty of her high calling. To me—an outsider—there was something uncomfortable in the sight of their happiness those last weeks before the baby came. I felt like a trespasser, a profaner of some high mystery. But Norman begged me not to leave. *BOOK VI* *I* Of course Ann was immensely interested in Nina’s adventure. From the first she was sure it would turn out well. Ignoring the shell, as she always did, the kernel of the matter did not seem at all strange to her. She went much further than the Professor in "Sartor Resartus," who thought of people without clothes. She stripped them of their vocations as well. For her there existed no such categories as "street car conductors," "actresses," "bank presidents," "seamstresses." She saw only men and women. The way they earned their living was as unimportant to her as the _mode_ of their garments. It was not what people did, but the way they did it, which mattered. A man, who had chosen cooking as a career and cooked passionately, threw all his energy into soups and _soufflés_ ranked higher with her than a listless, perfunctory poet. The doing heartily of any job whatsoever would sanctify it in her eyes. Of course she knew that working at the match trade or with white lead poisons a person, that some of the "dusty trades" ruin the lungs. But it would have been hard to get her to admit that pleasant, stimulating work might make a person more moral or that a vile job can damn a man. Nina’s success in her new rôle, seemed to Ann, to depend entirely upon the intensity with which she entered it. It mattered not at all whether she had been previously a street walker or a queen. This point of view—utterly different from mine—I found very common among the people I met at Cromley. Sooner or later I made the acquaintance of most of the leading anarchists of this country and many from abroad. They were sure of a welcome from the Bartons, sure of a meal and of any bed or sofa in the house which chanced to be vacant. They were an interesting and in many ways an attractive group. Like Ann, they were little interested in the outward accidents of a person’s life, but very intense in regard to a rather indefinite inner life. They were, of course, vehemently opposed to the police. But I was accepted without question. I remember old Herr Most said, one time, his long gaunt forefinger tapping my badge. "It’s not that which makes a policeman. It’s not the symbol we’re fighting but the habit of mind."