"Every skilled mechanic has struck," he said, with pride, as in a personal achievement. "And most of the rest. To-night four thousand out of their five thousand men were with us." "It came so suddenly. Nobody thought of a strike this morning." "We were better organized than they thought," he said, running his hand through his thick, black hair, and throwing back his head. "Better than I thought myself.... I've always said fool employers were the best friends we organizers have. The placard that young booby slapped the men in the face with--that did it....That and his spying on us last night." "I'm sure he wasn't spying last night." "Bosh! He was mighty quick to try to get our necks under his heel this morning." "I don't know what happened this morning," she said, slowly. "I'm his secretary, you know. Something happened about that placard. I don't believe he wanted it to go up." "You're defending him? Of course. You're a girl and you're close to the throne with a soft job. He's a good-looking kid in his namby-pamby Harvard way, too." "Mr. Dulac!...My job--I was going to ask you what I should do. I want to help the men. I want them to feel that I'm with them, working for them and praying for them. Ought I to quit, too--to join the strike?" Dulac looked at her sharply, calculatingly. "No," he said, presently, "you can do a lot more good where you are." "Will there be trouble? I dread to think of rioting and maybe bloodshed. It will be bad enough, anyhow--if it lasts long. The poor women and children!" "There'll be trouble if they try to turn a wheel or bring in scab labor." He laughed, so that his white teeth showed. "The first thing they did was to telephone for the police. I suppose this kid with a whole day's experience in the business will be calling in strike breakers and strong-arms and gunmen....Well, let him bring it down on himself if he wants to. We're in this thing to win. It means unionism breaking into this automobile game. This is just the entering wedge." "Won't the automobile manufacturers see that, too?" she asked. "Won't the men have all their power and wealth to fight?" Dulac shrugged his shoulders. "I guess the automobile world knows who Dulac is to-night," he said, with gleaming eyes. Somehow the boast became the man. It was perfectly in character with his appearance, with his bearing. It did not impress Ruth as a brag; it seemed a natural and ordinary thing for him to say. "You've been here just two weeks," she said, a trifle breathlessly; for he loomed big to her girlish eyes. "You've done all this in two weeks." He received the compliment indifferently. Perhaps that was a pose; perhaps the ego of the man made him impervious even to compliments. There are men so confident in their powers that a compliment always falls short of their own estimate of themselves.