rate for many weeks. May I write to London that you
mean to support us?"

Audrey was giving herself up for lost, and not without reason. She
foreshadowed a future of steely self-sacrifice, propaganda, hammers, riots,
and prison; with no self-indulgence in it, no fine clothes, no art, and no
young men save earnest young men. She saw herself in the iron clutch of her
own conscience and sense of duty. And she was frightened. But at that
moment Nick rushed into the room, and the spell was broken. Nick considered
that she had the right to monopolise Rosamund, and she monopolised her.

Miss Ingate prudently gathered Audrey to her side, and was off with her.
Nick ran to kiss them, and told them that Tommy was waiting for them in the
other studio. They groped downstairs, guided by a wisp of light from
Tommy's studio.

"Why didn't you come up?" asked Miss Ingate of Tommy in Tommy's
antechamber. "Have you and _she_ quarrelled?"

"Oh no!" said Tommy. "But I'm afraid of her. She'd grab me if she had the
least chance, and I don't want to be grabbed."

Tommy was arranging to escort them home, and had already got out on the
landing, when Rosamund and Madame Piriac, followed by Nick holding a candle
aloft, came down the stairs. A few words of explanation, a little innocent
blundering on the part of Nick, a polite suggestion by Madame Piriac, and
an imperious affirmative by Rosamund--and the two strangers to Paris found
themselves in Madame Piriac's waiting automobile on the way to their rooms!

In the darkness of the car the four women could not distinguish each
other's faces. But Rosamund's voice was audible in a monologue, and Miss
Ingate trembled for Audrey and for the future.

"This is the most important political movement in the history of the
world," Rosamund was saying, not at all in a speechifying manner, but quite
intimately and naturally. "Everybody admits that, and that's what makes it
so extraordinarily interesting, and that is why we have had such
magnificent help from women in the very highest positions who wouldn't
dream of touching ordinary politics. It's a marvellous thing to be in the
movement, if we can only realise it. Don't you think so, Mrs. Moncreiff?"

Audrey made no response. The other two sat silent. Miss Ingate thought:

"What's the girl going to do next? Surely she could mumble something."

The car curved and stopped.

"Here we are," said Miss Ingate, delighted. "And thank you so much. I
suppose