She thought, “‘I am not come to bring peace, but a sword.’” The sword was between her and her lover.

She had given him up.  She had chosen, not between him and the Vortex, but between him and her vision which was more than either of them or than all this.

She looked at Rosalind and Maud Blackadder who sang violently in the hall below her.  She had chosen freedom.  She had given up her lover.  She wondered whether Rosalind or the Blackadder girl could have done as much, supposing they had had a choice?

Then she looked at Veronica.

Veronica was standing between Michael and Nicholas.  She was slender and beautiful and pure, like some sacrificial virgin.  Presently she would be marching in the Procession.  She would carry a thin, tall pole, with a round olive wreath on the top of it, and a white dove sitting in the ring of the olive wreath.  And she would look as if she was not in the Procession but in another place.

When Dorothea looked at her she was lifted up above the insane ecstasy and the tumult of the herd-soul.  Her soul and the soul of Veronica went alone in utter freedom.

     Follow on!  Follow on!

     For Faith’s our spear and Hope’s our sword,
     And Love’s our mighty battle-lord. 
     Follow on!  Follow on!

     And Justice is our flag unfurled,
     The flaming flag that sweeps the world. 
     Follow on!  Follow on!

     And “Freedom!” is our battle-cry;
     For Freedom we will fight and die. 
     Follow on!  Follow on!

The Procession was over a mile long.

It stretched all along the Embankment from Blackfriar’s Bridge to
Westminster.  The Car of Victory, covered with the tricolour, and the
Bodyguard on thirteen white horses were drawn up beside Cleopatra’s
Needle and the Sphinxes.

Before the Car of Victory, from the western Sphinx to Northumberland Avenue, were the long regiments of the Unions and Societies and Leagues, of the trades and the professions and the arts, carrying their banners, the purple and the blue, the black, white and gold, the green, the orange and the scarlet and magenta.

Behind the Car of Victory came the eighteen prisoners with Lady Victoria Threlfall and Dorothea at their head, under the immense tricolour standard that Michael and Nicholas carried for them.  Behind the prisoners, closing the Procession, was a double line of young girls dressed in white with tricolour ribbons, each carrying a pole with the olive wreath and dove, symbolizing, with the obviousness of extreme innocence, the peace that follows victory.  They were led by Veronica.

She did not know that she had been chosen to lead them because of her youth and her processional, hieratic beauty; she thought that the Union had bestowed this honour on her because she belonged to Dorothea.