she had given him no orders to join the crowd, indeed had begged him to mind his own business and go home.  “This is my business,” he had said curtly, and for once masterfully, and she gave way.  Though Vivie for her own reasons carried no hammer or stone and as one of the principal organizers of the militant movement had been requested by the inner Council of the W.S.P.U. to keep out of prison as long as possible, she could not help cheering on the boldest and bravest in the mild violence of their protest.  To the angry police she seemed merely an impertinent young man, hardly worth arresting when they could barely master the two hundred and twenty-three arch offenders with glass-breaking weapons in their hands.  So a constable contented himself with marching on her feet with all his weight and thrusting his elbows violently into her breast.

She well-nigh fainted with the pain; in fact would have fallen in the crowd but for the interposition of Adams who carried her out of it to the corner of Parliament Street, where he pounced on one of the many taxis that crawled about the outskirts of the shouting, swaying crowd, sure of a fare from either police or escaping Suffragists.  Feeling certain that some policeman had not left the disguised Vivie entirely unobserved—­indeed Bertie had half thought he caught the words above the din:  “That’s David Williams, that is,” he told the taxi man to drive along the Embankment to the Temple.  By the time they had reached the nearest access on that side of Fountain Court, Vivie was sufficiently recovered from her semi-swoon to get out, and leaning heavily on Bertie’s arm, limp slowly through the intricacies of the Temple and out into Fleet Street by Sergeant’s Inn.  Then with fresh efforts and further halts they made their way to 94, Chancery Lane.

Some one was sitting up here with one electric light on, ready for any development connected with W.S.P.U. work that night.  To her—­fortunately it was a woman—­Bertie handed over his stricken chief, and then made his way home to his little house in Marylebone and a questioning and not too satisfied wife.  The Suffragette in charge of the top storey at 94 knew something, fortunately, of first aid, was deft of hands and full of sympathy.  Vivie’s—­or Mr. Michaelis’s—­lace-up boots were carefully removed and the poor crushed and bleeding toes washed with warm water.  The collar was taken off and the shirt unbuttoned revealing a terrible bruise on the sternum where the policeman’s elbow had struck her—­better however there, though it had nearly broken the breastbone, than on either side, as such a blow might have given rise to cancer.  As it was, Vivie when she coughed spat blood.

A cup of hot bovril and an hour’s rest on a long chair and she was ready, supremely anxious indeed, to try the last adventure:  an excursion across the roofs and up and down fire-escapes on to the parapet of her own especial dwelling, the old offices of Fraser and Warren at No. 88-90.  The great window of the partners’ room opened to her manipulations—­it had been carefully left unbolted before her departure for Caxton Hall; and aided cautiously and cleverly by her suffragette helper, Vivie at last found herself—­or Mr. Michaelis did—­in the snug little bedroom that knew her chiefly in her male form.