She did not answer, she looked at him, her eyes dark and oddly brilliant, and he saw that the shape of her mouth, distorted by pain, was the shape of a mocking smile.
He felt it change to a shape of surrender, under the touch of his lips.
He held her body as if the violence and the despair of the way he took her could wipe his unknown rival out of existence, out of her past, and more: as if it could transform any part of her, even the rival, into an instrument of his pleasure. He knew, by the eagerness of her movement as her arms seized him, that this was the way she wanted to be taken.
The silhouette of a conveyor belt moved against the strips of fire in the sky, raising coal to the top of a distant tower, as if an inexhaustible number of small black buckets rode out of the earth in a diagonal line across the sunset. The harsh, distant clatter kept going through the rattle of the chains which a young man in blue overalls was fastening over the machinery, securing it to the flatcars lined on the siding of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company of Connecticut.
Mr. Mowen, of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company across the street, stood by, watching. He had stopped to watch, on his way home from his own plant. He wore a light overcoat stretched over his short, paunchy figure, and a derby hat over his graying, blondish head.
There was a first touch of September chill in the air. All the gates of the Quinn plant buildings stood wide open, while men and cranes moved the machinery out; like taking the vital organs and leaving a carcass, thought Mr. Mowen.
"Another one?" asked Mr. Mowen, jerking his thumb at the plant, even though he knew the answer.
"Huh?" asked the young man, who had not noticed him standing there.
"Another company moving to Colorado?"
"Uh-huh."
"It's the third one from Connecticut in the last two weeks," said Mr.
Mowen. "And when you look at what's happening in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and all along the Atlantic coast . . ."
The young man was not looking and did not seem to listen. "It's like a leaking faucet," said Mr. Mowen, "and all the water's running out to Colorado. All the money." The young man flung the chain across and followed it deftly, climbing over the big shape covered with canvas.
"You'd think people would have some feeling for their native state, some loyalty . . . But they're running away. I don't know what's happening to people."
"It's the Bill," said the young man.
"What Bill?"
"The Equalization of Opportunity Bill."
"How do you mean?"
"I hear Mr. Quinn was making plans a year ago to open a branch in Colorado. The Bill knocked that out cold. So now he's made up his mind to move there, lock, stock and barrel."
"I don't see where that makes it right. The Bill was necessary. It's a rotten shame—old firms that have been here for generations . . .
There ought to be a law . . ."
The young man worked swiftly, competently, as if he enjoyed it. Behind him. the conveyor belt kept rising and clattering against the sky.
Four distant smokestacks stood like flagpoles, with coils of smoke weaving slowly about them, like long banners at half-mast in the reddish glow of the evening.
Mr. Mowen had lived with every smokestack of that skyline since the days of his father and grandfather. He had seen the conveyor belt from his office window for thirty years. That the Quinn Ball Bearing Company should vanish from across the street had seemed inconceivable; he had known about Quinn's decision and had not believed it; or rather, he had believed it as he believed any words he heard or spoke: as sounds that bore no fixed relation to physical reality. Now he knew that it was real. He stood by the flatcars on the siding as if he still had a chance to stop them.
"It isn't right," he said; he was speaking to the skyline at large, but the young man above was the only part of it that could hear him.
"That's not the way it was in my father's time. I'm not a big shot. I don't want to fight anybody. What's the matter with the world?" There was no answer, "Now you, for instance—are they taking you along to Colorado?"
"Me? No. I don't work here. I'm just transient labor. Just picked up this job helping to lug the stuff out."
"Well, where are you going to go when they move away?"
"Haven't any idea."
"What are you going to do, if more of them move out?"
"Wait and see."
Mr. Mowen glanced up dubiously: he could not tell whether the answer was intended to apply to him or to the young man. But the young man's attention was fixed on his task; he was not looking down.
He moved on, to the shrouded shapes on the next flatcar, and Mr.
Mowen followed, looking up at him, pleading with something up in space: "I've got rights, haven't I? I was born here. I expected the old companies to be here when I grew up. I expected to run the plant like my father did. A man is part of his community, he's got a right to count on it, hasn't he? . . . Something ought to be done about it."
"About what?"
