them into her bag, and went, leaving the passed proof of
the "Social Jottings" column waiting for Young Evans with the rest.

In the middle of the night she realised what she had done. But even in a
beleaguered town under the sway of Martial Law you cannot hang a lady, or
order her out and shoot her for Mutiny and Treason combined. There would
be a reprimand; what Bingo pleasantly termed "an official wigging," unless
the Blue Pencil could, by any feminine art, be persuaded that it had
passed those pars.

But, of course, she would never stoop to such a deception. The ruse she
had employed was culpable. The other thing would be infamous. And--he
would be sure to see that the end of the proof-slip had been pasted on.

She slept jerkily, rose headachy, and set out for the Convalescent
Hospital in that stage of penitence that immediately precedes hysterical
breakdown. She experienced a crisis of the nerves upon meeting a man, who,
regardless of quite a brisk bombardment that happened to be going on just
then, was walking along reading the _Siege Gazette_. Shirt-sleeved Young
Evans had worked until daylight getting the Thursday's issue out. And
there was a tremendous run upon copies. Every other person Lady Hannah
encountered upon the street seemed to have got one, and to find it
unusually interesting. The women especially. None of them were dull, or
languid, or dim-eyed this morning. The siege crawl was no longer in
evidence. They walked upon springs. Upon the stoep of the Hospital, where
the long rows of convalescents were airing, every patient appeared plunged
in perusal. Those who had not the paper were waiting, with watering
mouths, until those who had would part. A reviving breath seemed to have
passed over them, and spots of colour showed in their yellow, haggard
faces. They talked and laughed....

Lady Hannah passed in, conscious of an agreeable tingling all down her
spine. The hall-porter, a brawny, one-armed ex-Irregular, who had lost
what he was wont to term his "flapper" at the outset of hostilities, was
too deeply absorbed in spelling out a paragraph of the "Social Jottings"
column to salute her. Inside you heard little beyond the crackling of the
flimsy sheet, mingled with the comments, exclamations, anticipations,
expectations that went off on all sides, met each other, and rebounded,
exploding in coruscations of sparks. Something had happened, something was
going to happen, after months and months of eventl