The culprit sheepishly complied.
"You too!" She indicated the next, and was again obeyed. In the rear some one whispered.
"Stella Wilkes, come here."
Habit swayed the girl a step forward before she realized that she was tamely submitting, but she caught herself up with an oath, and returned stare for stare.
The matron's voice sharpened.
"Stella," she repeated, "come here."
The rebel's grip upon her cudgel tightened.
"Come yourself," she retorted. "Come if you dast!"
The matron dared. Force rather than psychology had ruled the police station of her schooling, and with the loss of her temper she reverted instinctively to its crude argument. A rush, a glint of handcuffs hitherto concealed, a violent brief struggle, a blow, a heavy fall—such were the kaleidoscopic details of a battle whose whole nobody saw perfectly, but from which Stella, the mob incarnate, emerged unmistakably a victor. Moblike, she was also merciless, and continued to rain blows which the half-stunned woman at her feet had power neither to return nor fend. One of them drew blood, a scarlet thread, which by fantastic approaches and doublings traversed the matron's now pallid cheek and stained the whiteness of her dress.
It was then Jean woke. She was no longer among the foremost. Separated from Stella in the sack of the upper floors, she had fallen late upon a mirror of the matron's, miraculously preserved till her coming, and had busied herself with its joyous ruin till the others had surged below and the rencounter at the door had begun. With her first idle moment apart from the common folly she experienced reaction; one glimpse of the scene below effected a cure. She loved the vanquished as little as the victor, but her every instinct for fair play and decency cried out against the wanton blows, and drove her hotly through the press to the dazed woman's side.