“And first we must ask Miss Harrison to explain how she became possessed of the secret policy of the Union which has never been discussed at any open meeting and is unknown to members of the General Committee.”

“Then,” said Dorothy, “there is a secret policy?”

“You seem to know it.  We have the right to ask how you know?  Unless you invented it.”

Dorothy faced them.  It was inconceivable that it should have happened, that she should be standing there, in the old schoolroom of her father’s house, while two strange women worried her.  She knew that her back was to the wall and that the Blackadder girl had been on the watch for the last half-hour to get her knife into her. (Odd, for she had admired the Blackadder girl and her fighting gestures.) It was inconceivable that she should have to answer to that absurd committee for her honour.  It was inconceivable that Rosalind, her friend, should not help her.

Yet it had happened.  With all her platform eloquence Rosalind couldn’t, for the life of her, get out one heroic, defending word.  From the moment when the Gilchrist woman had pounced, Rosalind had simply sat and stared, like a rabbit, like a fish, her mouth open for the word that would not come.  Rosalind was afraid to stand up for her.  It was dreadful, and it was funny to see Rosalind looking like that, and to realize the extent of her weakness and her obstinacy.

Yet Rosalind had not changed.  She was still the school-girl slacker who could never do a stroke of work until somebody had pushed her into it, who could never leave off working until stopped by the same hand that had set her going.  Her power to go, and to let herself rip, and the weakness that made her depend on Dorothy to start her were the qualities that attracted Dorothy to Rosalind from the beginning.  But now she was the tool of the fighting Suffrage Women.  Or if she wasn’t a tool, she was a machine; her brain was a rapid, docile, mechanical apparatus for turning out bad imitations of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and the two Blathwaites.  Her air of casual command, half-swagger, half-slouch, her stoop and the thrusting forward of her face, were copied sedulously from an admired model.

Dorothy found her pitiable.  She was hypnotized by the Blathwaites who worked her and would throw her away when she was of no more use.  She hadn’t the strength to resist the pull and the grip and the drive of other people.  She couldn’t even hold out against Valentina Gilchrist and Maud Blackadder.  Rosalind would always be caught and spun round by any movement that was strong enough.  She was foredoomed to the Vortex.

That was Dorothy’s fault.  It was she who had pushed and pulled the slacker, in spite of her almost whining protest, to the edge of the Vortex; and it was Rosalind, not Dorothy, who had been caught and sucked down into the swirl.  She whirled in it now, and would go on whirling, under the impression that her movements made it move.