“Oh, I say now!”

“Its the truth.”

“If a fiver will help you. . . .”

“Thanks.  A wager’s a wager.  I’ve lost.  I was a bally fool to play cards.  Deserve what I got.  Six months; that’s the agreement.  A madman’s wager; but I’ll stick.”

“Six months; twelve o’clock, midnight, November thirteenth.  It’s the date, old boy; that’s what hoodooed you, as the Americans say.”

Kitty wasn’t sure that the speaker was English; if he was, he had lost the insular significance of his vowels.  Still, it was, in its way, as pleasant a voice as the other’s.  There was no doubt about the younger man; he was English to the core, English in his love of chance, English in his loyalty to his word; stupidly English.  That he was the younger was a trifling matter to deduce:  no young man ever led his elder into mischief, harmful or innocuous.

“Six months.  It’s a joke, my boy; a great big laugh for you and me, when there’s nothing left in life but toddies and churchwardens.  Six months.”

“I dare say I can hang on till that time is over.  Well, good night!  No letters, no addresses.”

“Exact terms.  Six months from date I’ll be cooling my heels in your ante-room.”

“Cavenaugh, if it’s anything else except a joke. . . .”

“Oh, rot!  It was your suggestion.  I tell you, it’s a lark, nothing more.  A gentleman’s word.”

“I’ll start for my diggings.”

“Ride home with me; my cab’s here somewhere.”

“No, thanks.  I’ve got a little thinking to do and prefer to be alone.  Good night.”

“And good luck go with you.  Deuce take it, if you feel so badly. . . .”

There was no reply; and Kitty decided that the younger man had gone on.  Silence; or rather, she no longer heard the speakers.  Then a low chuckle came to her and this chuckle broadened into ironic laughter; and she knew that Mephisto was abroad.  What had been the wager; and what was the meaning of the six months?  It is instinctive in woman to interpret the human voice correctly, especially when the eyes are not distracted by physical presentations.  This man outside, whoever and whatever he was, deep in her heart Kitty knew that he was not going to play fair.  What a disappointing world it was!—­to set these human voices ringing in her ears, and then to take them out of her life forever!

Still the din of horns and whistles and sirens, still the shouting.  Would they never move on?  She was hungry.  She wanted to get back to the hotel, to learn what had happened to her mother.  Militant suffragettes, indeed!  A pack of mad witches, who left their brooms behind kitchen doors when they ought to be wielding them about dusty corners.  Woman never won anything by using brickbats and torches:  which proved on the face of it that these militants were inefficient, irresponsible, and unlearned in history.  Poor simpletons!  Had not theirs always been the power behind the throne?  What more did they want?