For Joe was watching his leader's wife. And watching, he appeared to me to be seeing her in a dreary succession of rooms like these, in cities, towns and mining camps, wherever her husband was leading a strike--and then trying to see his own home in such rooms, and Sue in his home, a wife like this. The picture struck me suddenly cold. Sue pulled into this for life! Again I remembered Eleanore's words--"Drawn into revolution." "Say, Joe," drawled Marsh, with a sharp look at him. "Got any of that typhoid left?" Joe laughed quickly, confusedly. Soon after that I left them. CHAPTER IX The next day I went to the editor for whom I was doing most of my work. When I told him I wanted to try Jim Marsh, the editor looked at me curiously. "Why?" he asked. I spoke of the impending strike. "Have you met Marsh?" he inquired. "Yes." "Do you like him?" "No." "But he struck you as big." "Yes--he did." "Are you getting interested in strikes?" "I want to see a big one close." "Why?" "Why not?" I retorted. "They're getting to be significant, aren't they? I want to see what they're like inside." The editor smiled: "You'll find them rather hot inside. Don't get overheated." "Oh you needn't think I'll lose my head." "I hope not," he said quietly. "Go ahead with your story about Marsh. I'll be interested to see what you do." I went out of the office in no easy frame of mind. The editor's inquisitive tone had started me thinking of how J. K. had been shut out by the papers because he wrote "the truth about things." "Oh that's all rot," I told myself. "Joe's case and mine are not the same. The magazines aren't like the papers and I'm not like Joe. His idea of the truth and mine will never be anywhere near alike." But what would Eleanore think of it? I went home and told her of my plan. To my surprise she made no objection. "It's the best thing you can do," she said. "We're in this now--on account of Sue--we can't keep out. And so long as we are, you might as well write about it, too. You think so much better when you're at work--more clearly--don't you--and that's what I want." She was looking at me steadily out of those gray-blue eyes of hers. "I want you to think yourself all out--as clearly as you possibly can--and then write just what you think," she said. "I want you to feel that I'm never afraid of anything you may ever write--so long as you're really sure it's true." I held her a moment in my arms and felt her tremble slightly. And then she said with her old quiet smile: "Sue has asked us over to Brooklyn to-night--Joe Kramer is to be there, too." "That affair is moving rather fast." "Oh yes, quite fast," she said cheerfully. "How will Dad look at it?" I asked. "As you did," said Eleanore dryly. "He'll look at it and see nothing at all." "I've half a mind to tell him!"