But although his gratitude for this job was voluminous it did not ease Yetta's conscience in the matter. There was something sardonically grotesque in the encounter. It convinced her, more surely than books could ever have done, of the Socialist doctrine that all life is knit into one whole; that Jake, just as much as Mrs. Cohen, had been a victim of a vicious system. "As long as this bitter industrial competition continues," she wrote to Walter, "there are bound to be such pitiful specimens as Jake. You see a lot in the papers nowadays about how the trusts are eliminating competition. The more I think about that the more horrible it seems. They are eliminating competition in the sales departments, in the distribution of the product, because there the waste is in dollars and cents. But in production--where the competitive waste is only human beings--the struggle is as bitter as ever. The high-salaried, 'gentlemanly' managers of the different plants of a trust coöperate in selling and in buying raw material, but in the actual work of the mills they have to compete to see who can exploit the workers hardest--just as Jake was driven to overwork us girls. I don't see any possible cure except Socialism, and I'm going to join the party." Many months later, when the courier brought this letter into the camp among the ancient ruins, the exile opened it with feverish hands, ran his fingers down page after page until he came to Yetta's name. It was not until he had read this part several times that he gave any attention to the fact that Yetta had become a Socialist. CHAPTER XX ISADORE BRAUN It was shortly before her visit to Cos-Cob that Isadore Braun asked Yetta to marry him. In a way he was almost ashamed of himself for doing so. His tempestuous desire for her was something he could not understand, something which forcibly escaped from the control of reason, to which all his life had been submitted. Yetta had walked into his cold, impersonal life in an utterly disturbing way. It was as if some sudden leak had let a glare of sunlight into a photographer's dark room. All the care which had been expended in fitting that laboratory for a specific--and valuable--piece of work was rendered useless. With the methodical forethought of his race and the narrow vision of a fanatic, Isadore had arranged his future. He had planned not only each day's work, but his life-work. With dogged singleness of purpose he had trained himself to be an efficient machine. Such an irrational thing as Love had no place in his scheme. To be sure, he believed that marriage was good. Sometime--say at thirty-five--he would look around for a convenient comrade, a woman of similar ideals and purpose, and they would mate without any serious derangement in the life of either. But he condemned Romance. It was irrational.