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workers, to keep them occupied until his return. As soon as the door had closed after him, it was as though a heavy weight had been lifted from the shoulders of the workers. The pressure lightened, the mood changed. Even the air seemed somehow to freshen. A murmur of voices began to spread over the place, like a breeze that stirs the stalks in a field of grain.

Pierre was the first to take advantage of the foreman's absence. His black eyes glowed behind his glasses, as he made a speech. The moist hair clung to his forehead, and drops of perspiration fell to the board on which he was nailing the fur skins. Now he found it easy to talk on. The clear facts of the situation gave him courage and confidence. The workers in the Citroen automobile factory had won forty-hour work week; an increase in wages. and for all that the Syndicate was to be thanked. "Alone the worker can accomplish nothing; but together everything is possible!" Pierre talked on ardently, gesturing with his calloused palms and not forgetting to punctuate his remarks with a resounding blow of his hammer on the nails.

"What do you say, friends? Shall we go ahead? To the Syndicate office right after work? Ça va?"

"Ca va, ça va," Jeanne agreed, and Suzette chimed in, more to be rid of his persistent talk than out of conviction. But it was the little errand boy, Marcel, who took on the suggestion with enthusiasm. Mary contented herself with the remark that "What was good for the others, would be all right with her." Anna vehemently nodded her agreement, but her thoughts were on Eric and the enigma of love that baffles the spirit even while at work.

Lucien, the cutter, the "aristocrat" of the shop, sat unmoved as though none of the talk concerned him. He was good looking, and he knew it. His elegant tie was always