speration, for in encounters with females like Jane Foley and Audrey they
had been accustomed to the active sympathy of the public. But centrifugal
force had rendered them ridiculous, and the public never sympathises with
those whom ridicule has covered. The strange and side-splitting effects of
centrifugal force had transformed about a hundred indifferent young men and
women into ardent and convinced supporters of feminism in its most advanced
form.

In the course of her slow revolution Audrey saw the rosetted steward
arguing with the second loud man, no doubt to persuade him to stop the
wheel. Then out of the tail of her eye she saw the steward run violently
from the tent. And then while her back was towards the entrance she was
deafened by a prodigious roar of delight from the mob. The two policemen
had fled also--probably for reinforcements and appliances against
centrifugal force. In their pardonable excitement they had, however,
committed the imprudence of departing together. An elementary knowledge of
strategy should have warned them against such a mistake. The wheel stopped
immediately. The second loud man beckoned with laughter to Jane Foley and
Audrey, who rose and hopefully skipped towards him. Audrey at any rate was
as self-conscious as though she had been on the stage.

"Here's th' back way," said the second loud man, pointing to a coarse
curtain in the obscurity of the nether parts of the enclosure.

They ran, Jane Foley first, and vanished from the regions of the Joy Wheel
amid terrific acclamations given in a strong Midland accent.

The next moment they found themselves in a part of the Blue City which
nobody had taken the trouble to paint blue. The one blue object was a small
patch of sky, amid clouds, overhead. On all sides were wooden flying
buttresses, supporting the boundaries of the Joy Wheel enclosure to the
south-east, of the Parade Restaurant and Bar to the south-west, and of a
third establishment of good cheer to the north. Upon the ground were
brick-ends, cinders, bits of wood, bits of corrugated iron, and all the
litter and refuse cast out of sight of the eyes of visitors to the
Exhibition of Progress.

With the fear of the police behind them they stumbled forward a few yards,
and then saw a small ramshackle door swinging slightly to and fro on one
hinge. Jane Foley pulled it open. They both went into a narrow passage. On
the mildewed wall of the passage was pinned up a notice in red ink: