Once Yetta had a sheet of paper arranged in her machine, the feeling of weirdness left her, and soon the spirit of composition made her forget that she was tired. For an hour she hammered the keyboard without interruption. It was not till she had finished her "story" that the fatigue reasserted itself. She ought to look over the copy to make corrections. She ought also to write a note to Isadore about the convention and to say that she was going home to sleep a week. She stretched herself energetically to drive away the drowsiness and--unconsciously--her arms went down on the table, her head down on her arms, and she was hopelessly asleep. Isadore was generally the first of the editorial force to come to the office. His "eight-hour" workday was from 4 A.M. till noon. On his way to the office in the morning he picked up the early editions of the other papers, clipped the news he wanted worked up for their afternoon edition, and got his day's editorial finished before the rest of the staff turned up. It was his theory that if he had an evening engagement,--a committee meeting or a speech to make,--he would sleep four hours in the afternoon. If he had work in the afternoon, he went to bed before nine. So he got in seven hours of sleep every day--theoretically. But it so often happened that he had work to do both afternoon and evening that the week was rare when he averaged more than five hours sleep a day. He generally found the office empty when he arrived. But this morning a light was burning in the back of the loft--"the composing room." One of the linotypers, who was also a mechanic, had come a few minutes before him to repair one of the machines which had gone wrong, and so save the expense of bringing in an expert. It was a violation of the union rules, but this linotyper was a Socialist. "Comrade," he said, when he saw Braun, "it's a crime. This linotype is worn out. I'm getting it so it will run again, but it's dead slow. And it'll break down again in a couple of days. It ought to be scrapped. It costs more to keep it going than the interest on the price of a new machine. It's uneconomic." Isadore said he would talk it over with the executive committee. He made his way through the shadowy machines to the front part of the loft, which was by courtesy called "the Editorial Room." No one who has not experienced the expensiveness of poverty can realize how maddening it is to throw money away because you are not rich enough to save it. Isadore knew there was very little chance of buying a new linotype. He turned the end of a long bookcase and suddenly saw the light burning over Yetta's table; he saw her stretched out motionless across her work. He had never seen her asleep. With an awful sinking of the heart the thought came that she might be dead. He sprang towards her and called her name. In the semidarkness he upset a chair with appalling clatter.