back continually by the police. Her soul was by
itself. Like Dorothea's soul it went apart from the soul of the crowd
and the soul of the Procession; only it was not proud; it was
simply happy.

The band had not yet begun to play; but already she heard the music
sounding in her brain; her feet felt the rhythm of the march.

Somewhere on in front the policemen made gestures of release, and the
whole Procession began to move. It marched to an unheard music, to the
rhythm that was in Veronica's brain.

They went through what were once streets between walls of houses, and
were now broad lanes between thick walls of people. The visible aspect
of things was slightly changed, slightly distorted. The houses stood
farther back behind the walls of people; they were hung with people; a
swarm of people clung like bees to the house walls.

All these people were fixed where they stood or hung. In a still and
stationary world the Procession was the only thing that moved.

She had a vague, far-off perception that the crowd was friendly.

A mounted policeman rode at her side. When they halted at the
cross-streets he looked down at Veronica with an amused and benign
expression. She had a vague, far-off perception that the policeman was
friendly. Everything seemed to her vague and far off.

Only now and then it struck her as odd that a revolutionary Procession
should be allowed to fill the streets of a great capital, and that a
body of the same police that arrested the insurgents should go with it
to protect them, to clear their triumphal way before them, holding up
the entire traffic of great thoroughfares that their bands and their
banners and their regiments should go through. She said to herself "What
a country! It couldn't happen in Germany; it couldn't happen in France,
or anywhere in Europe or America. It could only happen in England."

Now they were going up St. James's Street towards Piccadilly. The band
was playing the Marseillaise.

And with the first beat of the drum Veronica's soul came down from its
place, and took part in the Procession. As long as they played the
Marseillaise she felt that she could march with the Procession to the
ends of the world; she could march into battle to the Marseillaise; she
could fight to that music and die.

The women behind her were singing under their breath. They sang the
words of the Women's Marseillaise.

And Veronica, marching in front of them by herself, sang another song.