e mercy of one man, would you?"

"But I wouldn't. Not me," said Jenny. Yet somehow she spoke not quite so
bravely as once, and even as the assertion was made, her heart throbbed
to a memory of Maurice. After all, she had been at the mercy of one man.

"Of course you wouldn't," Miss Ragstead went on. "Well, we women who
want the vote have the same feeling. We don't like to be at the mercy of
men. I suppose you'd be horrified if I asked you to join our
demonstration in October?"

"What, walk in procession?" Jenny gasped.

"Yes, it's not so very dreadful. Who would object? Your mother?"

"She'd make fun of it, but that wouldn't matter. She'd make everyone
laugh to hear her telling about me in a procession."

Jenny remembered how her mother had teased her father when she saw him
supporting a banner of the Order of Foresters on the occasion of a
beanfeast at Clacton.

"Well, your lover?"

Jenny looked sharply at Miss Ragstead to ascertain if she were laughing.
The word sent such a pang through her. It was a favorite word of
Maurice.

"I haven't got one," she coldly answered.

"No?" said Miss Ragstead, gently skeptical. "I can hardly believe that,
you know, for you surely must be a most attractive girl."

"I did have one," said Jenny, surprised out of her reserve. "Only we
just ended it all of a sudden."

"My dear," said Miss Ragstead softly, "I don't think you're a very happy
little girl. I'm sure you're not. Won't you tell me about it?"

"There's nothing to tell. Men are rotters, that's all. If I thought I
could pay them out by being a suffragette, I'd be a suffragette."

Jenny spoke with decision, pointing the avowal by flinging her cigarette
into the grate.

"Yes, I know that's a reason with some. But I don't think that revenge
is the best of reasons, somehow. I would rather you were convinced that
the movement is right."

"If it annoys men, it must be right," Jenny argued. "Only I don't think
it does. I think they just laugh."

"I see you're in a turbulent state of mind," Miss Ragstead observed.
"And I'm glad in a way, because it proves that you have temperament and
character. You ought to resent a wrong. Of course, I know you'll
disagree with me when I tell you that you're too young to be permanently
injured by any man--and, I think I might add, too proud."

"Yes, I am most shocking proud," Jenny admitted, looking down on the
floor and, as it were, regarding her character incarnate before her.

"