oppressor be that murderous, stupid, treacherous, tyrannical
bully in the Old Testament, miscalled God, or whether the oppressor be
the proletariat which screamed for the blood of Jesus Christ and got
it!

"Free heart, free mind, free soul!--anything less means servitude, not
service--hatred, not love!"

A man in the outskirts of the crowd shouted: "Say, you're some
rag-chewer, little girl! Go to it!"

She laughed, then glanced at her wrist watch.

There were a few more words she might say before the time she allowed
herself had expired, and she found courage to go on, striving to
explain to the shifting knot of people that the battle which now
threatened civilisation was the terrible and final fight between Order
and Disorder and that, under inexorable laws which could never change,
order meant life and survival; disorder chaos and death for all living
things.

A few cheered her as she bade them good-night, picked up her soap-box
and carried it back to her boot-black friend, who inhabited a shack
built against the family-entrance side of a saloon.

She was surprised that Ilse and John Estridge had not appeared--could
scarcely understand it, as she made her way toward a taxicab.

For, in view of the startling occurrence earlier in the evening, and
the non-appearance of Ilse and Estridge, Palla had decided to return
in a taxi.

The incident--the boldness of the unknown man and vicious brutality of
his attitude, and also a sickening recollection of her own action and
his bloody face--had really shocked her, even more than she was aware
of at the time.

She felt tired and strained, and a trifle faint now, where she lay
back, swaying there on her seat, her pistol clutched inside her muff,
as the ramshackle vehicle lurched its noisy way eastward. And always
that dull sense of something sinister impending--that indefinable
apprehension--remained with her. And she gazed darkly out on the dark
streets, possessed by a melancholy which she did not attempt to
analyse.

Yet, partly it came from the ruptured comradeship which always
haunted her mind, partly because of Ilse and the uncertainty of what
might happen to her--may have happened already for all Palla
knew--and partly because--although she did not realise it--in the
profound deeps of her girl's being she was vaguely conscious of
something latent which seemed to have lain hidden there for a long,
long time--something inert, inexorable, indestructible, which, i