She was sickened by the easy intimacy with which Gene and Frieda shook hands at parting, needing to say nothing beyond a soft, revealing, ‘So long, comrade.’ But she made no comment on Frieda, as Gene again pulled toward him the telephone on which, all day long, he placidly forwarded his plans to smash the American government. She buckled to work. She had not learned until now that most banal, most ancient, most weighty truth, that there is refuge in work.

Sara was magnificently playing the role of new broom. She was assistant secretary of the Coheeze, and managing editor (the other editors were Eugene Silga) as well as two-finger stenographer and advertising solicitor of Protest & Progress. She wrote the minor editorials, with happy thought of how much they were going to annoy Fred, and in them felt herself a combination of Queen Marie, Emma Goldman, Lady Astor, Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Corday. It was a good job, this profession of being not merely allowed but encouraged to clout every head that rose above the mob, and of actually being paid for doing it — provided she went out and raised funds for the payment.

Into the office exploded their collaborators, Howard Cornplow and Guy Staybridge, with the uncollaborative, the hopelessly bourgeois Annabel tagging after them.

‘Gene! Gene! I’ve got a poem for you! Wrote it in biology class!’ crowed Guy. “This’ll stir up the fakers in Washington. Listen:

‘“Here is a dime,” the President said,

“If you’ll vote for me twice and bow your head.

Red roses rioting North and South —

Think of them buddy, and shut your mouth.

Go buy you a suit of clothes,” he said,

“But careful, buddy, the coat ain’t red!”’

‘Fine! Fine!’ said Gene easily, and for that ease Sara loved him. He dropped the poem into the pasteboard box which, Sara knew, held the manuscripts he had accepted and would never publish. He gushed, ‘Hope you’ve been able to raise a little dough, Guy. Kind of a crisis with the “P. & P.” If our friends will help us to get through this month . . .’

‘Yeh, I got fifteen dollars from Dr. Gomber, the professor of drama — he sympathizes with communism — he’s got plenty money — his father owns in on the Piping Rock Explosives Corporation.’ Guy handed over a wrinkled ten-dollar bill and a five. These did not go into any pasteboard box, but into Gene’s vest pocket, and Gene turned on Howard with an affectionate, ‘How about you, old man?’

Howard was looking vaguely at the window. ‘You ought to have more air in here, Gene. If I had time I could fix it so you’d have more air in here, Gene.’

‘I’m sure you could, Howard, but did you manage to raise any funds?’

‘Oh, I was going to, but I’ve been awful busy.’

‘Sure, but the world revolution has to be pretty busy, too, Howard.’

‘Well now, I’ll tell you how I feel about that, Gene. I can’t say I’m entirely sold on communism.’ Howard looked as handsome as Pike’s Peak at sunset and as dumb. ‘With my scientific training, Gene, you got to show me the data — show me the data; the thing is . . .’