At the top of the unfinished deck Marie Louise forgot Jake and gave her mind up to admiring Davidge as the father of all this factory. He led her down, out and along the bottom-land, through bogs, among heaps of rusty iron, to a concrete building-slip. He seemed to be very important about something, but she could not imagine what it was. She saw nothing but a long girder made up of sections. It lay along a flat sheet of perforated steel--the homeliest contraption imaginable. "Whatever is all this," she asked,--"the beginning of a bridge?" "Yes and no. It's the beginning of part of the bridge we're building across the Atlantic." "I don't believe that I quite follow you." "This is the keel of a ship." "No!" "Yep!" "And was the _Clara_ like this once?" "No. _Clara's_ an old-fashioned creature like mother. This is a newfangled thing like--like you." "Like me! This isn't--" "This is to be the _Mamise_." She could not hide her disappointment in her namesake. "I must confess she's not very beautiful to start with." "Neither were you at first, I suppose. I--I beg your pardon. I mean--" He tried to tell her about the new principles of fabricated ships, the standardizing of the parts, and their manufacture at distances by various steel plants, the absence of curved lines, the advantage of all the sacrifice of the old art for the new speed. In spite of what she had read she could not make his information her own. And yet it was thrilling to look at. She broke out: "I've just got to learn how to build ships. It's the one thing on earth that will make me happy." "Then I'll have to get it for you." "You mean it?" "If anything I could do could make you happy--cutting off my right arm, or--" "That's no end nice of you. But I am in earnest. I'm wretchedly unhappy, doing nothing. We women, I fancy, are most of us just where boys are when they have outgrown boyhood and haven't reached manhood--when they are crazy to be at something, and can't even decide where to begin. Women have got to come out in the world and get to work. Here's my job, and I want it!" He looked at the delicate hands she fluttered before him, and he smiled. She protested: "I always loved physical exercise. In England I did the roughest sort of farmwork. I'm stronger than I look. I think I'd rather play one of those rat-tat-tat instruments than--than a harp in New Jerusalem." Davidge shook his head. "I'm afraid you're not quite strong enough. It takes a lot of power to hold the gun against the hull. The compressed air kicks and shoves so hard that even men tire quickly. Sutton himself has all he can do to keep alive." "Give me a hammer, then, and let me--smite something." "Don't you think you'd rather begin in the office? You could learn the business there first. Besides, I don't like the thought of your roughing up those beautiful hands of yours." "If men would only quit trying to keep women's hands soft and clean, the world would be the better for it."