Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/112

 lenko," he repeated, shouting, above the din, "Krylenko."

The thin man grinned. "Oh, Krylenko," and, pointing, indicated the figure of a powerful, blond man, who stood leaning on a crowbar before an oven a little way off. He was, like the others, naked to the waist, and his white skin was already streaked with soot and sweat. When he turned, Philip saw that he was young, younger even than himself, and that his eyes were blue beneath a great mop of hair so yellow that it had the appearance of having been bleached. The eyes were intelligent.

In English with only a shadow of an accent he told Philip to strip off his coat and shirt and take up a crowbar. In a moment he was standing there with the others, indistinguishable among so many workers. He was half-naked, as he had been beside the fire at Megambo, and the same voluptuous sense of power swept through him. It was oddly terrifying, this cavern filled with flame and smoke and sweating men. It was oddly like the jungle. 

Behind him in the slate-colored house Aunt Mabelle waited, yawning and wishing for bed, while Elmer and Emma and Naomi sat in silence, pondering whether their battle had been completely lost. They sat in silence, and Naomi sometimes dried her red-rimmed eyes and sobbed, because there was nothing to say, nothing to do. It was all so much worse than they had expected. With Philip living, as one might have said, in hiding, life could still be endured, and one