In these grottoes of steel the clamor of the riveters grew maddening in her ears. They were everywhere, holding their machine-guns against reverberant metal and hammering steel against steel with a superhuman velocity; for man had made himself more than man by his own inventions, had multiplied himself by his own machineries. "That's the great Sutton," Davidge remarked, presently. "He's our prima donna. He's the champion riveter of this part of the country. Like to meet him?" Marie Louise nodded yes before she noted that the man was stripped to the waist. Runnels of sweat ran down his flesh and shot from the muscles leaping beneath his swart hide. Davidge went up to him and, after howling in vain, tapped his brawn. Sutton looked up, shut off his noise, and turned to Davidge with the impatience of a great tenor interrupted in a cadenza by a mere manager. Davidge yelled, with unnecessary voltage: "Sutton, I want to present you to Miss Webling." Sutton realized his nakedness like another Adam, and his confusion confused Marie Louise. She nodded. He nodded. Perhaps he made his muscles a little tauter. Davidge had planned to ask Sutton to let Marie Louise try to drive a rivet, just to show her how hopeless her ambition was, but he dared not loiter. Marie Louise, feeling silly in the silence, asked, stupidly: "So that's a riveter?" "Yes, ma'am," Sutton confessed, "this is a riveter." "Oh!" said Marie Louise. "Well, I guess we'll move on," said Davidge. As conversation, it was as unimportant as possible, but it had a negative historical value, since it left Marie Louise unconvinced of her inability to be a rivetress. She said, "Thank you," and moved on. Davidge followed. Sutton took up his work again, as a man does after a woman has passed by, pretending to be indignant, trying by an added ferocity to conceal his delight. At a distance Davidge paused to say: "He's a great card, Sutton. He gets a lot of money, but he earns it before he spends it, and he's my ideal of a workman. His work comes first. He hogs all the pay the traffic will bear, but he goes on working and he takes a pride in being better than anybody else in his line. So many of these infernal laborers have only one ideal--to do the least possible work and earn enough to loaf most of the time." Marie Louise thought of some of Jake Nuddle's principles and wondered if she had done right in recommending him for a place on Davidge's pay-roll. She was afraid he would be a slacker, never dreaming that he would be industrious in all forms of destruction. Jake never demanded short hours for his conspiracies.