"By whom, then?"
"Have we no enemies without our gates even now when we are at War?"
"Germans...." A light broke in upon Saxham. "It's not impossible. As for scattered literature being evidence—that can be bought anywhere. But granted the blackest sheep of the W.S.S.S. to be proved—piebald, that will not make me less anxious for you to-night."
He touched a heavy plait of the red-brown hair with a tender hand and said to her:
"I grudge that the pearls of my wife's eloquence should be thrown before Suffragists."
"We disagree, dear love," she said to him, "but we do not love the less for it. When the Franchise is accorded to Women, should I vote for one Party and you for another, will that matter a whit to you?"
"Not a whit," he said, as he kissed her. "You may give your vote to whom you choose, so long as the voter remains mine. Who was that?" Saxham's quick ear had heard a footstep in the hall. "Madame van der Heuvel coming back from Mass?"
"It is Patrine!"
"Patrine off and away at this hour?"
"I told her I would explain to you."