MILDRED--Take care. He said there were dark alleyways-- AUNT--[_In the same tone._] Poser! MILDRED--[_Biting her lips angrily._] You are right. But would that my millions were not so anemically chaste! AUNT--Yes, for a fresh pose I have no doubt you would drag the name of Douglas in the gutter! MILDRED--From which it sprang. Good-by, Aunt. Don't pray too hard that I may fall into the fiery furnace. AUNT--Poser! MILDRED--[_Viciously._] Old hag! [_She slaps her aunt insultingly across the face and walks off, laughing gaily._] AUNT--[_Screams after her._] I said poser! [_Curtain_] SCENE III SCENE--The stokehole. In the rear, the dimly-outlined bulks of the furnaces and boilers. High overhead one hanging electric bulb sheds just enough light through the murky air laden with coal dust to pile up masses of shadows everywhere. A line of men, stripped to the waist, is before the furnace doors. They bend over, looking neither to right nor left, handling their shovels as if they were part of their bodies, with a strange, awkward, swinging rhythm. They use the shovels to throw open the furnace doors. Then from these fiery round holes in the black a flood of terrific light and heat pours full upon the men who are outlined in silhouette in the crouching, inhuman attitudes of chained gorillas. The men shovel with a rhythmic motion, swinging as on a pivot from the coal which lies in heaps on the floor behind to hurl it into the flaming mouths before them. There is a tumult of noise--the brazen clang of the furnace doors as they are flung open or slammed shut, the grating, teeth-gritting grind of steel against steel, of crunching coal. This clash of sounds stuns one's ears with its rending dissonance. But there is order in it, rhythm, a mechanical regulated recurrence, a tempo. And rising above all, making the air hum with the quiver of liberated energy, the roar of leaping flames in the furnaces, the monotonous throbbing beat of the engines. As the curtain rises, the furnace doors are shut. The men are taking a breathing spell. One or two are arranging the coal behind them, pulling it into more accessible heaps. The others can be dimly made out leaning on their shovels in relaxed attitudes of exhaustion. PADDY--[_From somewhere in the line--plaintively._] Yerra, will this divil's own watch nivir end? Me back is broke. I'm destroyed entirely. YANK--[_From the center of the line--with exuberant scorn._] Aw, yuh make me sick! Lie down and croak, why don't yuh? Always beefin', dat's you! Say, dis is a cinch! Dis was made for me! It's my meat, get me! [_A whistle is blown--a thin, shrill note from somewhere overhead in the darkness. Yank curses without resentment._] Dere's de damn engineer crakin' de whip. He tinks we're loafin'. PADDY--[_Vindictively._] God stiffen him!