She had learned a great deal during this month out of the shop. From words dropped here and there, from things she had seen, she had come to a clearer understanding of the thing she had escaped. She had thought she was in love with Harry Klein! She went to sleep realizing how hollow had been her conception of love. The word had a very different content now that she had seen Walter and Mabel together and had heard the gossip of the girls. The thought of two such people being in love seemed very wonderful to her. After breakfast the next morning she took her seat again in the shade of the elm tree and, with her chin in her hands, pondered over the strike. She had a remarkable memory for words and phrases. She could have given a full synopsis of all the speeches she had heard in that month. Most of the people who had talked at the meetings had tried to tell what the strike meant. She went over the various and often contradictory explanations, and, supplementing them with her own experience and observations, reached an interpretation of her own. Much of it came as a direct inheritance from her father. The two speakers who had influenced her most were Longman and Braun. With the former she believed that all those who loved liberty were under a sacred obligation to struggle for it. And Braun's straightforward, concise statement of social organization seemed to her reasonable. As soon as possible she wanted to get a chance to study Socialism. Meanwhile the storm kicked up by her arrest was growing apace. That morning the papers contained an open letter which the Commissioner of Corrections had addressed to the ladies of the Woman's Trade Union League. He had been forced to this action, because the evening papers had published interviews with other strikers who had been in the workhouse. They gave impressive details of the nauseous place, of the rank food, the vermin, the dark cells, and the debased associations. The Commissioner's letter was a dignified document. It had been written by his secretary. In a sweeping manner he denounced the accusations made by the strikers as malicious libel and referred the ladies of the Advisory Council and the public in general to page 213 of the last report of the Prison Association, which gave just tribute to the modern sanitation, the wholesome dietary, and the healthy régime of the workhouse.