nd their whole energies in trying, by extravagances of
hair-ribbon and sidecombs and patent leather belts, the collection of
actresses' postcards, and the completest abstention from study, to
assert the femininity which their ill-health had obscured. Their efforts
were never rewarded by the companionship of any but the most shambling
kind of man or boy; but they proceeded through life with a greater
earnestness than other children of their age, intent on the business of
establishing their sex. Miss Coates was plainly the adult of the type,
who had found in Anti-Suffragism, that extreme gesture of political
abasement before the male, a new way of calling attention to what
otherwise only the person who was naturally noticing about clothes would
detect. It was a fact of immense and dangerous significance that the
Government and the majority of respectable citizens were on the side of
this pale, sickly, mad young woman against the brave, beautiful Mrs.
Ormiston. People were horrible.

And there was Mr. Philip.

Oh, why had she thought of him? All the time that she had been in the
hall she had forgotten him, but now he had come back to torture her
untiringly, as he had done all that week. It had been all very well for
her to run through the darkness so happily that evening, unvexed by the
accusation of her boldness because she was not bold, for she had not
then known the might of cruelty. Indeed, she had not believed that
anybody had ever hurt anybody deliberately, except long-dead soldiers
sent by mad kings to make what history books, to mark the unusual horror
of the event, called massacres. She had begun to know better late last
Monday afternoon. She had returned to her little room after taking down
some shorthand notes from dictation, and, because there was a thick,
ugly twilight and she had come dazzled by the crude light on Mr.
Mactavish James's desk, had moved about for some seconds, with a freedom
that seemed foolishness as soon as she knew she was observed, before
she saw that Mr. Philip was standing at the hearth.

"Have you come straight off the train?" it was in her mind to say. "Will
I ask Mrs. Powell to get you some tea?" But he looked strange. The
driving flame of the fire cast flickering shadows and red lights on the
shoulders and skirt of his greatcoat, so he looked as though he was
performing some evil incantatory dance of the body, while his face and
hands and feet remained black and still. There was no