lacable question.

"Oh! By the first train," said Nick eagerly. As she approached the lamp,
the gleam of the devotee could be seen in her gaze. In one moment she had
sacrificed Paris and art and Tommy and herself, and had risen to the sacred
ardour of a vocation. Rosamund was well accustomed to watching the process,
and she gave not the least sign of satisfaction or approval.

"I ought to tell you," she went on, "that I came over from London suddenly
by the afternoon service in order to escape arrest. I am now a political
refugee. Things have come to this pass. You will do well to leave by the
first train. That is why I decided to call here before going to bed."

"Where's Tommy?" asked Nick, appealing wildly to Miss Ingate and Audrey.
Upon being answered she said, still more wildly: "I must see her. Can
you--No, I'll run down myself." In the doorway she turned round: "Mrs.
Moncreiff, would you and Miss Ingate like to have my studio while I'm away?
I should just love you to. There's a very nice bed over there behind the
screen, and a fair sort of couch over here. Do say you will! _Do_!"

"Oh! We will!" Miss Ingate replied at once, reassuringly, as though in
haste to grant the supreme request of some condemned victim. And indeed
Miss Nickall appeared ready to burst into tears if she should be thwarted.

As soon as Nick had gone, Miss Ingate's smiling face, nervous, intimidated,
audacious, sardonic, and good humoured, moved out of the gloom nearer to
Rosamund.

"You knew I played the barrel organ all down Regent Street?" she ventured,
blushing.

"Ah!" murmured Rosamund, unmoved. "It was you who played the barrel-organ?
So it was."

"Yes," said Miss Ingate. "But I'm like you. I don't care passionately for
prison. Eh! Eh! I'm not so vehy, vehy fond of it. I don't know Miss Burke,
but what a pity she has got six weeks, isn't it? Still, I was vehy much
struck by what someone said to me to-day--that you'd be vehy sorry if women
_did_ get the vote. I think I should be sorry, too--you know what I mean."

"Perfectly," ejaculated Rosamund, with a pleasant smile.

"I hope I'm not skidding," said Miss Ingate still more timidly, but also
with a sardonic giggle, looking round into the gloom. "I do skid sometimes,
you know, and we've just come away from a----"

She could not finish.

"And Mrs. Moncreiff, if I've got the name right, is she with us, too?"
asked Rosamund, miraculously urbane. And added: "I hear she has wealth a