The Patriot by Pearl S. Buck

wake?” she murmured, and went on her way.
    He was not sorry he had told her, no, because she had the right to know of coming happiness, even if she would not believe in it, and he knew now his life was safe with her. She would never betray him.
    Besides, the time grew short. It was already the middle of the second month, and although the mill owners did not know, the strikes were to be called in fourteen days. No one knew how far these strikes would go, because none knew how many revolutionists were in the city. But in the band each rose and told in numbers what he had done, so that if by chance there were ears in the walls, they could hear but not understand. A girl rose and said, “Of the women to whom I was assigned, sixty-three, prepared eighteen.”
    This told them that in her band there were sixty-three women, of whom eighteen knew how to use a gun and had guns. For in this work there was no difference between men and women, and women were to be soldiers, too.
    Two days before the strike they held their last meeting. En-lan so declared it.
    “We must not meet again,” he said. “The police have grown so wary that it is not safe. Nor is it necessary. We know our way, hour by hour. If it must be that any of you need to speak to me, mark a round sun on a bit of paper and put it in my hand, and I will set a time and place. Otherwise let there be no meeting between us or any sign of recognition, until after the day. Each in his place, and on that day the whole will come to life. Until then, each goes alone.”
    But the next day in their English class, where he and En-lan sat side by side, En-lan had drawn a round sun on his notebook, and under it had written an hour. So he had gone to En-lan’s room, and En-lan had opened the door. When he came in En-lan said, “I am more afraid of you than the others. I want to warn you especially, in that house of yours, to say nothing to anyone. These last days are the most dangerous. And your father is powerful. All our lives depend on secrecy.”
    “I?” I-wan asked impetuously. “But I—”
    En-lan said, “You are so innocent—you tell without knowing it. You do not know how to conceal.”
    He was about to deny this when he remembered that it was true. He had told Peony. He stared at En-lan, his mouth open.
    “You have already done it,” En-lan remarked. “I see it in your face. Come with me into the open, where we can talk.”
    So they had gone out on the streets and seeming to buy peanuts and sweets, to stop and watch a wandering actor’s show, to laugh at some children, En-lan questioned him at such moments as no one was close, and he drew out of him everything about Peony and what he had told her.
    He had never seen En-lan so angry.
    “A woman and a slave!” En-lan muttered, his voice low, but his eyes like a tiger’s. “Was there ever such a silly as you!”
    “But I tell you, you don’t know Peony,” I-wan said eagerly. “She is like my sister.” He hesitated, then stammered, “Why—why, she—she loves me!”
    “She isn’t your sister,” En-lan said, “and it is the worse that she loves you. She will want to hurt you—because you don’t love her—even though she kills you.”
    “Peony is not like that,” I-wan protested.
    En-lan said nothing for a while. Then he sighed. “Well, it is done!” And after a while he said again, “I cannot rest. I am responsible for you all. Can you send this girl to meet me somewhere, so that I can see what she is and threaten her into silence?”
    “I don’t know,” I-wan stammered. “I don’t think she would—I think she would be ashamed to come to meet you.”
    “A slave?” En-lan asked scornfully.
    “She isn’t just a slave,” I-wan said. “We’ve not treated her like a slave.”
    “Ask her,” En-lan said. And again he said, “It is more than your life, remember. We might all be seized and killed.”
    It was true that not a day passed now that there were not those whom the police seized and