Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/248

 When he saw Krylenko's face, he knew that the strike was lost. Even in the reflected firelight, he seemed years older. He was thin, with deep lines on either side of his mouth.

"Oh, it's you, Feeleep. . . . I thought it was the old woman."

He rose and put a match to the gas and then peered closely into Philip's face, with the look of a man waking from a deep sleep.

"It's you. . . . Sit down."

Philip knew the room well. It was small and square, with no furniture save a bed, two pine chairs and a washstand. Above the bed there was a shelf made by Krylenko himself to hold the dangerous books that Irene Shane and her mother had given him. . . John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx and a single volume of Nietzsche.

"And how do you feel . . . huh?" asked Krylenko, seating himself once more on the bed.

"All right. Look at me."

"Kind-a skinny."

"You, too."

"Yeah! Look at me!" Krylenko said bitterly. "Look at me. . . . A bum! A failure! No job! Nothing."

"It's not as bad as that."

"It will be." He looked up. "Did yuh pass Hennessey's place?"

"Yes."

"Well, you see what it is . . . trying to make a lot of pigs fight. All they want is to quit work and get drunk. That's all it means to them." 