Everything happened in her mind while the wheel went round once, showing her in turn to the various portions of the audience, and bringing her at length to a second view of the sprawling policemen.  Whereupon she thought queerly:  “What do I care about the vote, really?” And finally she thought with anger and resentment:  “What a shame it is that women haven’t got the vote!” And then she heard a gay, quiet sound.  It was Jane Foley laughing gently behind her.

“Can you see the big one now, darling?” asked Jane roguishly.  “Has he picked himself up again?”

Audrey laughed.

And at last the audience laughed also.  It laughed because the big policeman, unconquerable, had made another intrepid dash for the centre of the wheel and fallen upon his stomach as upon a huge india-rubber ball.  The audience did more than laugh—­it shrieked, yelled, and guffawed.  The performance to be witnessed was worth ten times the price of entry.  Indeed no such performance had ever before been seen in the whole history of popular amusement.  And in describing the affair the next morning as “unique” the Birmingham Daily Post for once used that adjective with absolute correctness.  The policemen tried again and yet again.  They got within feet, within inches, of their prey, only to be dragged away by the mysterious protector of militant maidens—­centrifugal force.  Probably never before in the annals of the struggle for political freedom had maidens found such a protection, invisible, sinister and complete.  Had the education of policemen in England included a course of mechanics, these particular two policemen would have known that they were seeking the impossible and fighting against that which was stronger than ten thousand policemen.  But they would not give up.  At each fresh attempt they hoped by guile to overcome their unseen enemy, as the gambler hopes at each fresh throw to outwit chance.  The jeers of the audience pricked them to desperation, for in encounters with females like Jane Foley and Audrey they had been accustomed to the active sympathy of the public.  But centrifugal force had rendered them ridiculous, and the public never sympathises with those whom ridicule has covered.  The strange and side-splitting effects of centrifugal force had transformed about a hundred indifferent young men and women into ardent and convinced supporters of feminism in its most advanced form.

In the course of her slow revolution Audrey saw the rosetted steward arguing with the second loud man, no doubt to persuade him to stop the wheel.  Then out of the tail of her eye she saw the steward run violently from the tent.  And then while her back was towards the entrance she was deafened by a prodigious roar of delight from the mob.  The two policemen had fled also—­probably for reinforcements and appliances against centrifugal force.  In their pardonable excitement they had, however, committed the imprudence of departing together.  An elementary knowledge of strategy should have warned them against such a mistake.  The wheel stopped immediately.  The second loud man beckoned with laughter to Jane Foley and Audrey, who rose and hopefully skipped towards him.  Audrey at any rate was as self-conscious as though she had been on the stage.