thereon.  She was perplexed by this, and stood for some seconds in the empty street hesitating, until the appearance of another circumspect woman under the street lamp at the corner reassured her.  In one of the big gates was a little door, and she rapped at this.  It was immediately opened by a man with light eyelashes and a manner suggestive of restrained passion.  “Come right in,” he hissed under his breath, with the true conspirator’s note, closed the door very softly and pointed, “Through there!”

By the meagre light of a gas lamp she perceived a cobbled yard with four large furniture vans standing with horses and lamps alight.  A slender young man, wearing glasses, appeared from the shadow of the nearest van.  “Are you A, B, C, or D?” he asked.

“They told me D,” said Ann Veronica.

“Through there,” he said, and pointed with the pamphlet he was carrying.

Ann Veronica found herself in a little stirring crowd of excited women, whispering and tittering and speaking in undertones.

The light was poor, so that she saw their gleaming faces dimly and indistinctly.  No one spoke to her.  She stood among them, watching them and feeling curiously alien to them.  The oblique ruddy lighting distorted them oddly, made queer bars and patches of shadow upon their clothes.  “It’s Kitty’s idea,” said one, “we are to go in the vans.”

“Kitty is wonderful,” said another.

“Wonderful!”

“I have always longed for prison service,” said a voice, “always.  From the beginning.  But it’s only now I’m able to do it.”

A little blond creature close at hand suddenly gave way to a fit of hysterical laughter, and caught up the end of it with a sob.

“Before I took up the Suffrage,” a firm, flat voice remarked, “I could scarcely walk up-stairs without palpitations.”

Some one hidden from Ann Veronica appeared to be marshalling the assembly.  “We have to get in, I think,” said a nice little old lady in a bonnet to Ann Veronica, speaking with a voice that quavered a little.  “My dear, can you see in this light?  I think I would like to get in.  Which is C?”

Ann Veronica, with a curious sinking of the heart, regarded the black cavities of the vans.  Their doors stood open, and placards with big letters indicated the section assigned to each.  She directed the little old woman and then made her way to van D. A young woman with a white badge on her arm stood and counted the sections as they entered their vans.

“When they tap the roof,” she said, in a voice of authority, “you are to come out.  You will be opposite the big entrance in Old Palace Yard.  It’s the public entrance.  You are to make for that and get into the lobby if you can, and so try and reach the floor of the House, crying ’Votes for Women!’ as you go.”

She spoke like a mistress addressing school-children.

“Don’t bunch too much as you come out,” she added.