She had no shyness of manner but a deep and intense shyness of the soul.
Some day...perhaps...but never yet.
II
She turned her car after a time, for she feared that her batteries would
run down. The strikers were still lounging and scowling; and this time
having relaxed her mental girths she looked at them with sympathy. She
knew from the liberal education she had received at the hands of Mr. James
Kirkpatrick, and the admissions of Judge Lawton and other thoughtful men,
that the iniquities of employers and labor were pretty equally divided;
greed and lack of tact on the one hand, greed and class hatred and the itch
for power on the part of labor leaders; and a stupidity in the mass that
was more pardonable than the short-sighted stupidities of capital....But
what would you? A few centuries hence the world might be civilized, but not
in her time. Nothing gave her mind less exercise. One thing at least was
certain and that was that when strikes lasted too long the laborers and
their families went hungry, and the employers did not. That settled the
question for her and determined the course of her sympathy. (It was not yet
the fashion to recognize the unfortunate "public," squeezed and helpless
between these two louder demonstrators of sheer human nature.)
But her mind did not linger in the shipyards. She had problems of her
own....The chief of her compensations, having made a mess of her life, had
been taken from her: her pride and her faith in the man to whom she was
bound.
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