And here the Herr Doctor relapsed into silence again. Jurgis had noticed that the beautiful young girl who sat by the centre-table was listening with something of the same look that he himself had worn, the time when he had first discovered Socialism. Jurgis would have liked to talk to her, he felt sure that she would have understood him. Later on in the evening, when the group broke up, he heard Mrs. Fisher say to her, in a low voice, “I wonder if Mr. Maynard will still write the same things about Socialism;” to which she answered, “I don’t know⁠—but if he does we shall know that he is a knave!”

And only a few hours after this came election day⁠—when the long campaign was over, and the whole country seemed to stand still and hold its breath, awaiting the issue. Jurgis and the rest of the staff of Hinds’s Hotel could hardly stop to finish their dinner, before they hurried off to the big hall which the party had hired for that evening.