e wives and mothers.'

She went on with a stern emotion that was oddly contagious, telling
about a certain scene at the Headquarters of the Union. Against the grey
and squalid background of a Poor Women's movement, stood out in those
next seconds a picture that the true historian who is to come will not
neglect. A call for recruits with this result--a huddled group, all new,
unproved, ignorant of the ignorant. The two or three leaders,
conscience-driven, feeling it necessary to explain to the untried women
that if they shared in the agitation, they were not only facing
imprisonment, but unholy handling.

'It was only fair to let them know the worst,' said the woman at the
door, 'before they were allowed to join us.'

As the abrupt sentences fell, the grim little scene was reconstituted;
the shrinking of the women who had offered their services ignorant of
this aspect of the battle--their horror and their shame. At the memory
of that hour the strongly-controlled voice shook.

'They cried, those women,' she said.

'But they came?' asked the other, trembling, as though for her, too, it
was vital that these poor women should not quail.

'Yes,' answered their leader a little hoarsely, 'they came!'

CHAPTER XII

One of the oddest things about these neo-Suffragists was the simplicity
with which they accepted aid--the absence in the responsible ones of
conventional gratitude. This became matter for both surprise and
instruction to the outsider. It no doubt had the effect of chilling and
alienating the 'philanthropist on the make.' Even to the less
ungenerous, not bargainers for approbation or for influence, even in
their case the deep-rooted suspicion we have been taught to cultivate
for one another, makes the gift of good faith so difficult that it can
be given freely only to people like these, people who plainly and daily
suffered for their creed, who stood to lose all the things most of us
strive for, people who valued neither comfort, nor money, nor the
world's good word. That they took help, and even sacrifice, as a matter
of course, seemed in them mere modesty and sound good sense; tantamount
to saying, 'I am not so silly or self-centred as to suppose you do this
for _me_. You do it, of course, for the Cause. The Cause is yours--is
all Women's. You serve humanity. Who am I that I should thank you?'

This attitude extended even to acts that were in truth prompted less by
concern for the larger issue than