how they lay now day and night in the black subterranean prison cells,
huddled on the tree-stumps that were the only seats, clad in nothing but
coarse vests because they would not wear the convict clothes, breathing
the foul sewage-tainted air for all but that hour when they were carried
up to the cell where the doctor and the wardresses waited to bind and
gag them and ram the long feeding-tube down into their bodies. This they
had endured for six weeks, and would for six weeks more. She spoke with
a proud reticence as to her sufferings, about her recent sojourn in
Holloway, from which she had gained release by hunger-striking a
fortnight before.

"Ah, I could die for her!" cried Ellen to herself, wet-eyed with
loyalty. "If only it weren't for mother I'd go to prison to-morrow." Her
love could hardly bear it when Mrs. Ormiston went on, restrained rage
freezing her words, to indict the conspiracy of men that had driven her
and her followers to revolt: the refusal to women of a generous
education, of a living wage, of opportunities for professional
distinction; the social habit of amused contempt at women's doings; the
meanness that used a woman's capacity for mating and motherhood to bind
her a slave either of the kitchen or of the streets. All these things
Ellen knew to be true, because she was poor and had had to drink life
with the chill on, but it did not sadden her to have her reluctant views
confirmed by the woman she thought the wisest in the world, for she felt
an exaltation that she was afraid must make her eyes look wild. It had
always appeared to her that certain things which in the main were
sombre, such as deep symphonies of an orchestra, the black range and
white scaurs of the Pentland Hills against the south horizon, the idea
that at death one dies utterly and is buried in the earth, were patterns
cut from the stuff of reality. They were relevant to fate, typical of
life, in a way that gayer things, like the song of girls or the
field-checked pleasantness of plains or the dream of a soul's holiday in
eternity, were not; And in the bitter eloquence of this pale woman she
rapturously recognised that same authentic quality.

But what good was it if one woman had something of the dignity of nature
and art? Everybody knew that the world was beautiful. She sent her mind
out from the hall to walk in the night, which was not wet, yet had a
bloom of rain in the air, so that the lights shone with a plumy beam and