"It is necessary to know," she told him.

"I do not understand you," he cried, leaning toward her. "Sometimes you
are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other way.
Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I were a
del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as your New
England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a Puritan."

She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscence at the word. Ditmar
had called her so, too.

"I can't help what I am," she said.

"It is that which inhibits you," he declared. "That Puritanism. It must
be eradicated before you can develop, and then--and then you will be
completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I will
teach you many things--develop you. We will read Sorel together he is
beautiful, like poetry--and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and
Tasso--yes, and d'Annunzio. We shall live."

"We are living, now," she answered. The look with which she surveyed him
he found enigmatic. And then, abruptly, she rose and went to her
typewriter.

"You don't believe what I say!" he reproached her.

But she was cool. "I'm not sure that I believe all of it. I want to think
it out for myself--to talk to others, too."

"What others?"