Miss Ingate prudently gathered Audrey to her side, and was off with her. Nick ran to kiss them, and told them that Tommy was waiting for them in the other studio. They groped downstairs, guided by a wisp of light from Tommy’s studio.
“Why didn’t you come up?” asked Miss Ingate of Tommy in Tommy’s antechamber. “Have you and she quarrelled?”
“Oh no!” said Tommy. “But I’m afraid of her. She’d grab me if she had the least chance, and I don’t want to be grabbed.”
Tommy was arranging to escort them home, and had already got out on the landing, when Rosamund and Madame Piriac, followed by Nick holding a candle aloft, came down the stairs. A few words of explanation, a little innocent blundering on the part of Nick, a polite suggestion by Madame Piriac, and an imperious affirmative by Rosamund—and the two strangers to Paris found themselves in Madame Piriac’s waiting automobile on the way to their rooms!
In the darkness of the car the four women could not distinguish each other’s faces. But Rosamund’s voice was audible in a monologue, and Miss Ingate trembled for Audrey and for the future.
“This is the most important political movement in the history of the world,” Rosamund was saying, not at all in a speechifying manner, but quite intimately and naturally. “Everybody admits that, and that’s what makes it so extraordinarily interesting, and that is why we have had such magnificent help from women in the very highest positions who wouldn’t dream of touching ordinary politics. It’s a marvellous thing to be in the movement, if we can only realise it. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Moncreiff?”
Audrey made no response. The other two sat silent. Miss Ingate thought:
“What’s the girl going to do next? Surely she could mumble something.”
The car curved and stopped.
“Here we are,” said Miss Ingate, delighted. “And thank you so much. I suppose all we have to do is just to push the bell and the door opens. Now Audrey, dear.”