“I shall never be stronger than I am to-day and it can’t be postponed, cost me what it will,” was the reply, while the sad eyes looked away across the course.

“Well,” said Vivie, “I wanted you to know that I was close by, prepared to back you up if need be.  And there are others of our Union about the place.  That young man over there talking to the policeman is really A——­ K——­ though she is supposed to be in prison.  Mrs. Tuke is somewhere about, Mrs. Despard is on the Grand Stand, and Blanche Smith is selling The Suffragette.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Davison, turning round for an instant, and pressing Vivie’s hand, “Good-bye.  I hope what I am going to do will be effectual.”

Vivie did not like to prolong the talk in case it should attract attention.  Individual action was encouraged under the W.S.P.U., and when a member wished to do something on her own, her comrades did not fuss with advice.  So Vivie returned to the Grand Stand.

Presently there was the stir occasioned by the arrival of the Royal personages.  Vivie noted with a little dismay that while she was wearing a Homburg hat all the men near her wore the black and glistening topper which has become—­or had, for the tyranny of custom has lifted a little since the War—­the conventional head-gear in which to approach both God and the King.  There was a great raising of these glistening hats, there were grave bows or smiling acknowledgments from the pavilion.  Then every one sat down and the second event was run.

Still Emily Wilding Davison made no sign.  Vivie could just descry her, still in the front of the crowd, still gazing out over the course, pressed by the crowd against the broad white rail.

* * * * *

The race of the day had begun.  The row of snickering, plunging, rearing, and curvetting horses had dissolved, as in a kaleidoscope, into a bunch, and a pear-shaped formation with two or three horses streaming ahead as the stem of the pear.  Then the stem became separated from the pear-shaped mass by its superior speed, and again this vertical line of horses formed up once more horizontally, leaving the mass still farther behind.  Then the horses seen from the Grand Stand disappeared—­and after a minute reappeared—­three, four, five—­and the bunch of them, swerving round Tattenham Corner and thundering down the incline towards the winning post....  The King’s horse seemed to be leading, another few seconds would have brought it or one of its rivals past the winning post, when ... a slender figure, a woman, darted with equal swiftness from the barrier to the middle of the course, leapt to the neck of the King’s horse, and in an instant, the horse was down, kneeling on a crumpled woman, and the jockey was flying through the air to descend on hands and knees practically unhurt.  The other horses rushed by, miraculously avoiding the prostrate figures.  Some horse passed the winning post,