put it to
her lips, but no sound would come. Then, as though it were breaking
through an obstacle, the sound shot forth, and to Audrey it was a gigantic
voice that functioned quite independently of her will. Tremendously excited
by the noise, she bawled louder and still louder.

"I've missed," said Jane calmly in her ear. "That's enough, I think. Come
along."

"But they can't possibly see us," said Audrey, breathless, lowering the
instrument.

"Come along, dear," Jane Foley insisted.

People with open mouths were crowding at the aperture of the inner wall,
but, Jane going first, both girls pushed safely through the throng. The
wheel had stopped. The entire congregation was staring agog, and in two
seconds everybody divined, or had been nudged to the effect, that Jane and
Audrey were the authoresses of the pother.

Jane still leading, they made for the exit. But the first loud man rushed
chivalrously in.

"Perlice!" he cried. "Two bobbies a-coming."

"Here!" said the second loud man. "Here, misses. Get on the wheel. They'll
never get ye if ye sit in the middle back to back." He jumped on to the
wheel himself, and indicated the mathematical centre. Jane took the
suggestion in a flash; Audrey was obedient. They fixed themselves under
directions, dropping the megaphone. The wheel started, and the megaphone
rattled across its smooth surface till it was shot off. A policeman ran in,
and hesitated; another man, in plain clothes, and wearing a rosette, ran
in.

"That's them," said the rosette. "I saw her with the grey hair from the
gallery."

The policeman sprang on to the wheel, and after terrific efforts fell
sprawling and was thrown off. The rosette met the same destiny. A second
policeman appeared, and with the fearless courage of his cloth, undeterred
by the spectacle of prostrate forms, made a magnificent dash, and was
equally floored.

As Audrey sat very upright, pressing her back against the back of Jane
Foley and clutching at Jane Foley's skirts with her hands behind her--the
locked pair were obliged thus to hold themselves exactly over the axis of
the wheel, for the slightest change of position would have resulted in
their being flung to the circumference and into the blue grip of the
law--she had visions of all her life just as though she had been drowning.
She admitted all her follies and wondered what madness could have prompted
her remarkable escapades both in Paris and out of it. She remembered Mada