. I
only hope they'll realize in time the good they've renounced and the
spirit they've aroused. For I know as well as any man could tell me, it
would be a bad day for England if all women felt about all men _as I
do_.'

She retired in a tumult. The others on the platform closed about her.
The chairman tried in vain to get a hearing from the swaying and
dissolving crowd.

Jean made a blind forward movement towards the monument. Stonor called
out, in a toneless voice--

'Here! follow me!'

'No--no--I----' The girl pressed on.

'You're going the wrong way.'

'_This_ is the way----'

'We can get out quicker on this side.'

'I don't _want_ to get out.'

'What?'

He had left Lady John, and was following Jean through the press.

'Where are you going?' he asked sharply.

'To ask that woman to let me have the honour of working with her.'

The crowd surged round the girl.

'Jean!' he called upon so stern a note that people stared and stopped.

Others--not Jean.

CHAPTER XVII

A little before six o'clock on that same Sunday, Jean Dunbarton opened
the communicating door between her own little sitting-room and the big
bare drawing-room of her grandfather's house in Eaton Square. She stood
a moment on the threshold, looking back over her shoulder, and then
crossed the drawing-room, treading softly on the parquet spaces between
the rugs. She went straight to the window, and was in the act of parting
the lace curtains to look out, when she heard the folding doors open.
With raised finger she turned to say 'Sh!' The servant stood silently
waiting, while she went back to the door she had left open and with an
air of caution closed it.

When she turned round again the butler had stepped aside to admit Mr.
Stonor. He came in with a quick impatient step; but before he had time
to get a word out--'Speak low, please,' the girl said. He was obviously
too much annoyed to pay much heed to her request, which if he thought
about it at all, he must have interpreted as consideration for the
ailing grandfather.

'I waited a full half-hour for you to come back,' he said in a tone no
lower than usual.

The girl had led the way to the side of the room furthest from the
communicating door. 'I am sorry,' she said dully.

'If you didn't mind leaving me like that,' he followed her up with his
arraignment, 'you might at least have considered Lady John.'

'Is she here with you?' Jean stopped by the sofa near the window.