'Worse. I've never been so moved in public—no tragedy, no great opera ever gripped an audience as the situation in the House did that night. There we all sat breathless—with everything more favourable to us than it had been within the memory of woman. Another five minutes and the resolution would have passed. Then—all in a moment'—Mrs. Freddy clasped her hands excitedly—'all in a moment a horrible, dingy little flag was poked through the grille of the Woman's Gallery—cries—insults—scuffling—the police—the ignominious turning out of the women—us as well as the—— Oh, I can't think of it without——' She jumped up and walked to and fro. 'Then the next morning!' She paused. 'The people gloating. Our friends antagonized—people who were wavering—nearly won over—all thrown back! Heart-breaking! Even my husband! Freddy's been an angel about letting me take my share when I felt I must—but, of course, I've always known he doesn't like it. It makes him shy. I'm sure it gives him a horrid twist inside when he sees even the discreetest little paragraph to say that I am "one of the speakers." But he's always been an angel about it before this. After the disgraceful scene, he said, "It just shows how unfit women are for any sort of coherent thinking or concerted action."'

'To think,' said Jean, more sympathetically, 'that it should be women who've given their own scheme the worst blow it ever had!'

'The work of forty years destroyed in five minutes!'

'They must have felt pretty sick,' said the girl, 'when they waked up the next morning—those Suffragettes.'

'I don't waste any sympathy on them. I'm thinking of the penalty all women have to pay because two or three hysterical——'

'Still, I think I'm sorry for them,' the girl persisted. 'It must be dreadful to find you've done such a lot of harm to the thing you care most about in the world.'

'Do you picture the Suffragettes sitting in sack-cloth?' said Vida, speaking at last.

'Well, they can't help realizing now what they've done.'

'Isn't it just possible they realize they've waked up interest in the Woman Question so that it's advertised in every paper, and discussed under every roof, from Land's End to John-o'-Groats? Don't you think they know there's been more said and written about it in these days since the scene than in the ten years before it!'

'You aren't saying you think it was a good way to get what they wanted!' exclaimed Mrs. Freddy.