MRS KNOX. [gasps] Margaret!

MARGARET. [continuing] He did, just as if he had known me for years.  We got on together like old friends.  He asked me would I have some champagne; and I said it would cost too much, but that I would give anything for a dance.  I longed to join the people on the stage and dance with them:  one of them was the most beautiful dancer I ever saw.  He told me he had come there to see her, and that when it was over we could go somewhere where there was dancing.  So we went to a place where there was a band in a gallery and the floor cleared for dancing.  Very few people danced:  the women only wanted to shew off their dresses; but we danced and danced until a lot of them joined in.  We got quite reckless; and we had champagne after all.  I never enjoyed anything so much.  But at last it got spoilt by the Oxford and Cambridge students up for the boat race.  They got drunk; and they began to smash things; and the police came in.  Then it was quite horrible.  The students fought with the police; and the police suddenly got quite brutal, and began to throw everybody downstairs.  They attacked the women, who were not doing anything, and treated them just as roughly as they had treated the students.  Duvallet got indignant and remonstrated with a policeman, who was shoving a woman though she was going quietly as fast as she could.  The policeman flung the woman through the door and then turned on Duvallet.  It was then that Duvallet swung his leg like a windmill and knocked the policeman down.  And then three policemen rushed at him and carried him out by the arms and legs face downwards.  Two more attacked me and gave me a shove to the door.  That quite maddened me.  I just got in one good bang on the mouth of one of them.  All the rest was dreadful.  I was rushed through the streets to the police station.  They kicked me with their knees; they twisted my arms; they taunted and insulted me; they called me vile names; and I told them what I thought of them, and provoked them to do their worst.  Theres one good thing about being hard hurt:  it makes you sleep.  I slept in that filthy cell with all the other drunks sounder than I should have slept at home.  I cant describe how I felt next morning:  it was hideous; but the police were quite jolly; and everybody said it was a bit of English fun, and talked about last year’s boat-race night when it had been a great deal worse.  I was black and blue and sick and wretched.  But the strange thing was that I wasnt sorry; and I’m not sorry.  And I dont feel that I did anything wrong, really. [She rises and stretches her arms with a large liberating breath] Now that it’s all over I’m rather proud of it; though I know now that I’m not a lady; but whether thats because we’re only shopkeepers, or because nobody’s really a lady except when theyre treated like ladies, I dont know. [She throws herself into a corner of the sofa].

MRS KNOX. [lost in wonder] But how could you bring yourself to do it, Margaret?  I’m not blaming you:  I only want to know.  How could you bring yourself to do it?