Immense crowds had been gathering in the Imperial Hall, and the lines of political enthusiasts bound thither were now thinning.  The Blue City was full of rumours, as that the Cabinet Minister was too afraid to come, as that he had been smuggled to the hall inside a tea-chest, and as that he had walked openly and unchallenged through the whole Exhibition.  It was no rumour, but a sure fact, that two women had been caught hiding on the roof of the Imperial Hall, under natural shelters formed by the beams and boarding supporting the pediment of the eastern facade, and that they were ammunitioned with flags and leaflets and a silk ladder, and had made a hole in the roof exactly over the platform.  These two women had been seen in charge of policemen at the Exhibition police-station.  It was understood by many that they were the last hope of militancy that afternoon; many others, on the contrary, were convinced that they had been simply a feint.

“Well,” said Miss Ingate suddenly, glancing up at the Imperial clock, “I think I shall move outside and sit in the car.  I think that’ll be the best place for me.  I said that night in Paris that I’d get my arm broken, but I’ve changed my mind about that.”  She rose.

“Winnie,” protested Audrey, “aren’t you going to see it out?”

“No,” said Miss Ingate.

“Are you afraid?”

“I don’t know that I’m afraid.  I played the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street, and it was smashed to pieces.  But I don’t want to go to prison.  Really, I don’t want to.  If me going to prison would bring the Vote a single year nearer, I should say:  ‘Let it wait a year.’  If me not going to prison meant no Vote for ever and ever, I should say:  ’Well, struggle on without the Vote.’  I’ve no objection to other people going to prison, if it suits them, but it wouldn’t suit me.  I know it wouldn’t.  So I shall go outside and sit in the car.  If you don’t come, I shall know what’s happened, and you needn’t worry about me.”

The dame duly departed, her lips and eyes equally ironic about her own prudence and about the rashness of others.

“Let’s have some more lemonade—­shall we?” said Jane Foley.

“Oh, let’s!” agreed Audrey, with rapture.  “And more sponge-cake, too!  You do look lovely like that!”

“Do I?”

Jane Foley had her profuse hair tightly bound round her head and powdered grey.  It was very advisable for her to be disguised, and her bright hair was usually the chief symptom of her in those disturbances which so harassed the police.  She now had the appearance of a neat old lady kept miraculously young by a pure and cheerful nature.  Audrey, with a plain blue frock and hat which had cost more than Jane Foley would spend on clothes in twelve months, had a face dazzling by its ingenuous excitement and expectation.  Her little nose was extraordinarily pert; her forehead superb; and all her gestures had the same vivacious