For the next hour they sat face to face in the quiet little restaurant to which Miss Arnold had led the way. The other patrons found themselves looking over at the table in the corner, and wondering what common subject could so engross the refined young woman in the tailored gown and the man in ill-fitting clothes, with big red hands, red neck and crude, square face. For their part these two were unconscious of the wondering eyes upon them. With a query now and then from Miss Arnold, Tom spiritedly presented the union side of mooted questions of the day,--the open shop, the strike, the sympathetic strike, the boycott. The things Miss Arnold had read had dealt coldly with the moral and economic principles involved in these questions. Tom spoke in human terms; he showed how every point affected living men, and women, and children. The difference was the difference between a treatise and life. Miss Arnold was impressed,--not alone by what Tom said, but by the man himself. The first two or three times she had seen him, on his brief visits to the office, she had been struck only by a vague bigness--a bigness that was not so much of figure as of bearing. On his last visit she had been struck by his bold spirit. She now discovered the crude, rugged strength of the man: he had thought much; he felt deeply; he believed in the justice of his cause; he was willing, if the need might be, to suffer for his beliefs. And he spoke well, for his sentences, though not always grammatical, were always vital. He seemed to present the very heart of a thing, and let it throb before the eyes. When they were in the street again and about to go their separate ways, Miss Arnold asked, with impulsive interest: "Won't you talk to me again about these things--some time?" Tom, glowing with the excitement of his own words and of her sympathetic listening, promised. It was finally settled that he should call the following Sunday afternoon. Back at her desk, Miss Arnold fell to wondering what sort of man Tom would be had he had four years at a university, and had his life been thrown among people of cultivation. His power, plus these advantages, would have made him--something big, to say the least. But had he gone to college he would not now be in a trade union. And in a trade union, Miss Arnold admitted to herself, was where he was needed, and where he belonged. Tom went on his way in the elation that comes of a new and gratifying experience. He had never before had so keen and sympathetic a listener. And never before had he had speech with a woman of Miss Arnold's type--educated, thoughtful, of broad interests. Most of the women he had known necessity had made into household drudges--tired and uninteresting, whose few thoughts rarely ranged far from home. Miss Arnold was a discovery to him. Deep down in his consciousness was a distinct surprise that a woman should be interested in the big things of the outside world.