sed and she should be waiting
upon him.

In Sir Joseph's house there had been a bit of statuary representing
Hercules and Omphale. The mighty one was wearing the woman's kirtle
and carrying her distaff, and the girl was staggering under the
lion-skin and leaning on the bludgeon. Marie Louise always hated the
group. It seemed to her to represent just the way so many women tried
to master the men they infatuated. But Marie Louise despised
masterable men, and she had no wish to make a toy of one. Yet she had
wondered if a man and a woman could not love each other more perfectly
if neither were master or mistress, but both on a parity--a team,
indeed.

Davidge enjoyed talking to her, at least. That comforted her. When she
came back from her meditations he was saying:

"My company is reaching out. We've bought a big tract of swamp, and
we're filling it in and clearing it, and we're going to lay out a
shipyard there and turn out ships--standardized ships--as fast as we
can. We're steadying the ground first, sinking concrete piles in steel
casing--if you put 'em end to end, they'd reach twenty-five miles.
They're just to hold the ground together. That's what the whole
country has got to do before it can really begin to begin--put some
solid ground under its feet. When the ship is launched she mustn't
stick on the ways or in the mud.

"Of course, I'd rather go as a soldier, but I've got no right to. I
can ride or walk all day, and shoot straight and stand all kinds of
weather, and killing Germans would just about tickle me to death. But
this is a time when every man has got to do what he can do better than
he can do anything else. And I've spent my life in shipyards.

"I was a common laborer first--swinging a sledge; I had an arm then!
That was before we had compressed-air riveters. I was a union man and
went on strike and fought scabs and made the bosses eat crow. Now I'm
one of the bosses. I'm what they call a capitalist and an oppressor of
labor. Now I put down strikes and fight the unions--not that I don't
believe in 'em, not that I don't know where labor was before they had
unions and where it would be without 'em to-day and to-morrow, but
because all these things have to be adjusted gradually, and because
the main thing, after all, is building ships--just now, of course,
especially.

"When I was a workman I took pride in my job, and I thought I was an
artist at it. I wouldn't take anybody's lip. Now that I'm a bos