cane back, weak with laughter.

"How funny! How degrading! But how funny!" she kept repeating. "That
large and enraged Jew with the red flag!--the wretched little
Christian shrimp you carried wriggling away by the collar! Oh, Palla!
Palla! Never shall I forget the expression on your face--like a bored
housewife, who, between thumb and forefinger, carries a dead mouse by
the tail----"

"He was trying to kick you, my dear," explained Palla, beginning to
remove the hairpins from her hair.

Ilse touched her eyes with her handkerchief.

"They might have thrown bombs," she said. "It's all very well to
laugh, darling, but sometimes such affairs are not funny."

Palla, seated at her dresser, shook down a mass of thick, bright-brown
hair, and picked up her comb.

"I am wondering," she said, turning partly toward Ilse, "what Jim
Shotwell would think of me."

"Fighting on the street!"--her laughter rang out uncontrolled. And
Palla, too, was laughing rather uncertainly, for, as her recollection
of the affair became more vivid, her doubts concerning the entire
procedure increased.

"Of course," she said, "that red flag was outrageous, and you were
quite right in destroying it. One could hardly buttonhole such a
procession and try to educate it."

Ilse said: "One can usually educate a wild animal, but never a rabid
one. You'll see, to-night."

"Where are we going, dear?"

"We are going to a place just west of Seventh Avenue, called the Red
Flag Club."

"Is it a club?"

"No. The Reds hire it several times a week and try to fill it with
people. There is the menace to this city and to the nation, Palla--for
these cunning fomenters of disorder deluge the poorer quarters of the
town with their literature. That's where they get their audiences. And
that is where are being born the seeds of murder and destruction."

Palla, combing out her hair, gazed absently into the mirror.

"Why should not we do the same thing?" she asked.

"Form a club, rent a room, and talk to people?"

"Yes; why not?" asked Palla.

"That is exactly why I wish you to come with me to-night--to realise
how we should combat these criminal and insane agents of all that is
most terrible in Europe.

"And you are right, Palla; that is the way to fight them. That is the
way to neutralise the poison they are spreading. That is the way to
educate the masses to that sane socialism in which we both believe. It
can be done by education. It can be done by