We were behindhand for the dead as well as for the living. At six the power was turned off, the machine hands went home, there was still an unfinished heap of black badges. I got up and put on my things in the dark closet that served for dressing-room. Frances called to the hand sewers in her rasping voice: "You darsn't leave till you've finished them badges." How could I feel the slavery they felt? My nerves were sensitive; I was unaccustomed to their familiar hardships. But on the other hand, my prison had an escape; they were bound within four walls; I dared to rebel knowing the resources of the black silk emergency bag, money lined. They for their living must pay with moral submission as well as physical fatigue. There was nothing between them and starvation except the success of their daily effort. What opposition could the German woman place, what could she risk, knowing that two hungry mouths waited to be fed beside her own? With a farewell glance at the rubbish-strewn room, the high, grimy windows, the group of hand sewers bent over their work in the increasing darkness, I started down the stairs. A hand was laid on my arm, and I looked up and saw Mike's broad Irish face and sandy head bending toward me. "I suppose you understand," he said, "that there'll be no more work for you." "Yes," I answered, "I understand," and we exchanged a glance that meant we both agreed it was Frances' fault. In the shop below I found Mr. F. and returned the fifty cents he had advanced me. He seemed surprised at this. "I'm sorry," he said, in his gentle voice, "that we couldn't arrange things." "I'm sorry, too," I said. But I dared not add a word against Frances. She had terrorized me like the rest, and though I knew I never would see her again, her pale, lifeless mask haunted me. I remembered a remark the German woman had made when Frances dismissed the Polish girl: "People ought to make it easy, and not hard, for others to earn a living." At the end of this somewhat agitating day I returned to my tenement lodgings as to a haven of rest. There was one other lodger besides myself: she was studying music on borrowed money at four dollars a lesson. Obviously she was a victim to luxury in the same degree as the young women with whom I had lunched at the bakery. Nothing that a rich society girl might have had been left out of her wardrobe, and borrowed money seemed as good as any for making a splurge. Miss Arnold was something of a snob, intellectual and otherwise. It was evident from my wretched clothes and poor grammar that I was not accustomed to ladies of her type, but, far from sparing me, she humiliated me with all sorts of questions. "I'm tired of taffeta jackets, aren't you?" she would ask, apropos of my flimsy ulster. "I had taffeta last year, with velvet and satin this winter; but I don't know what I'll get yet this summer."