“But couldn’t you have done anything to stop it?” demanded a Frenchman, lying next to him. “All your millions of Socialists, what were they up to? What went wrong with the Internationale, the Universal Brotherhood of Labour, and all that Tra-la-la?” She looked at her watch. Fortunately it was still early. She would be able to let herself in before anyone was up. It was but a little way. She wondered, while rearranging her hair, what day it was. She would find out, when she got home, from the newspaper.!

“Must you, dear?” she said. “Can’t you reconcile it to yourself—to go on with your work of mercy, of saving poor folks’ lives?” “I’m just running round to the doctor’s,” she whispered. “His medicine hasn’t come. I shan’t be long.”

A young officer was lying in a corner behind a screen. He leant forward and pushed it aside. She still continued to write for Greyson, but felt she was labouring for the doomed. Lord Sutcliffe had died suddenly and his holding in the Evening Gazette had passed to his nephew, a gentleman more interested in big game shooting than in politics. Greyson’s support of Phillips had brought him within the net of Carleton’s operations, and negotiations for purchase had already been commenced. She knew that, sooner or later, Greyson would be offered the alternative of either changing his opinions or of going. And she knew that he would go. Her work for Mrs. Denton was less likely to be interfered with. It appealed only to the few, and aimed at informing and explaining rather than directly converting. Useful enough work in its way, no doubt; but to put heart into it seemed to require longer views than is given to the eyes of youth. They had commenced with the narrow strip of burial ground lying between the south side of the church and Cheyne Walk. And there the little pew-opener had showed her the grave of Anna, afterwards Mrs. Spragg. “Who long declining wedlock and aspiring above her sex fought under her brother with arms and manly attire in a flagship against the French.” As also of Mary Astell, her contemporary, who had written a spirited “Essay in Defence of the Fair Sex.” So there had been a Suffrage Movement as far back as in the days of Pope and Swift.