she was enabled to play with impunity her part among
men and events. The official permission to occupy Wake
Robin Lodge is still on the records, signed by no less a man
than Wickson, the minor oligarch of the Manuscript.

CHAPTER XIX

TRANSFORMATION

"You must make yourself over again," Ernest wrote to me. "You must cease
to be. You must become another woman--and not merely in the clothes you
wear, but inside your skin under the clothes. You must make yourself
over again so that even I would not know you--your voice, your gestures,
your mannerisms, your carriage, your walk, everything."

This command I obeyed. Every day I practised for hours in burying
forever the old Avis Everhard beneath the skin of another woman whom I
may call my other self. It was only by long practice that such results
could be obtained. In the mere detail of voice intonation I practised
almost perpetually till the voice of my new self became fixed,
automatic. It was this automatic assumption of a role that was
considered imperative. One must become so adept as to deceive oneself.
It was like learning a new language, say the French. At first speech in
French is self-conscious, a matter of the will. The student thinks
in English and then transmutes into French, or reads in French but
transmutes into English before he can understand. Then later, becoming
firmly grounded, automatic, the student reads, writes, and THINKS in
French, without any recourse to English at all.

And so with our disguises. It was necessary for us to practise until our
assumed roles became real; until to be our original selves would require
a watchful and strong exercise of will. Of course, at first, much was
mere blundering experiment. We were creating a new art, and we had much
to discover. But the work was going on everywhere; masters in the
art were developing, and a fund of tricks and expedients was being
accumulated. This fund became a sort of text-book that was passed on, a
part of the curriculum, as it were, of the school of Revolution.*

* Disguise did become a veritable art during that period.
The revolutionists maintained schools of acting in all their
refuges. They scorned accessories, such as wigs and beards,
false eyebrows, and such aids of the theatrical actors. The
game of revolution was a game of life and death, and mere
accessories were traps. Disguise had to be fundamental,
intrinsic, part and p