Rossiter and Vivie met for the first time for a year at Emily Davison’s funeral.  Rossiter had been profoundly moved at her self-sacrifice; she was moreover a Northumbrian and a distant kinswoman.  Perhaps, also, he felt that he had of late been a little lukewarm over the Suffrage agitation.  His motor-brougham, containing with himself the very unwilling Mrs. Rossiter, followed in the procession of six thousand persons which escorted the coffin across London from Victoria station to King’s Cross.  A halt was made outside a church in Bloomsbury where a funeral service was read.

Mrs. Rossiter thought the whole thing profoundly improper.  In the first place the young woman had committed suicide, which of itself was a crime and disentitled you to Christian burial; in the second she had died in a way greatly to inconvenience persons in the highest society; in the third she had always understood that racing was a perfectly proper pastime for gentlemen; and in the fourth this incident, touching Michael through his relationship with the deceased, would bring him again in contact with that Vivie Warren—­there she was and there was he, in close converse—­and make a knighthood from a nearly relenting Government well-nigh impossible.  Rossiter, after the service, had begged Vivie to come back to tea with them in Park Crescent and give Mrs. Rossiter and himself a full account of what took place at Epsom.  Vivie had declined.  She had not even spoken to the angry little woman, who had refused to attend the service and had sat fuming all through the half hour in her electric brougham, wishing she had the courage and determination to order the chauffeur to turn round and run her home, leaving the Professor to follow in a taxi.  But perhaps if she did that, he would go off somewhere with that Warren woman.

Michael presently re-entered the carriage and in silence they returned to Portland Place.

The next day his wife meeting one of her Anti-Suffrage friends said: 

“Er—­supposing—­er—­you had got to know something about these dreadful militant women, something which might help the police, yet didn’t want to get too much mixed up with it yourself, and certainly not bring your husband into it—­the Professor thoroughly disapproves of militancy, even though he may have foolish ideas about the Vote—­er—­what would you do?”

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s part of a letter.”

“Well, I should just send it to the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard, and tell them under what circumstances it came into your possession.  You needn’t even give your name or address.  They’ll soon know whether it’s any use or not.”  So Mrs. Rossiter took from her desk that scrap of partly burnt paper with the typewritten words on it which she had picked out of the grate two and a half years before, and posted it to the Criminal Investigation Department, with the intimation that