A man in the outskirts of the crowd shouted: “Say, you’re some rag-chewer, little girl! Go to it!”
She laughed, then glanced at her wrist watch.
There were a few more words she might say before the time she allowed herself had expired, and she found courage to go on, striving to explain to the shifting knot of people that the battle which now threatened civilisation was the terrible and final fight between Order and Disorder and that, under inexorable laws which could never change, order meant life and survival; disorder chaos and death for all living things.
A few cheered her as she bade them good-night, picked up her soap-box and carried it back to her boot-black friend, who inhabited a shack built against the family-entrance side of a saloon.
She was surprised that Ilse and John Estridge had not appeared––could scarcely understand it, as she made her way toward a taxicab.
For, in view of the startling occurrence earlier in the evening, and the non-appearance of Ilse and Estridge, Palla had decided to return in a taxi.
The incident––the boldness of the unknown man and vicious brutality of his attitude, and also a sickening recollection of her own action and his bloody face––had really shocked her, even more than she was aware of at the time.
She felt tired and strained, and a trifle faint now, where she lay back, swaying there on her seat, her 304 pistol clutched inside her muff, as the ramshackle vehicle lurched its noisy way eastward. And always that dull sense of something sinister impending––that indefinable apprehension––remained with her. And she gazed darkly out on the dark streets, possessed by a melancholy which she did not attempt to analyse.
Yet, partly it came from the ruptured comradeship which always haunted her mind, partly because of Ilse and the uncertainty of what might happen to her––may have happened already for all Palla knew––and partly because––although she did not realise it––in the profound deeps of her girl’s being she was vaguely conscious of something latent which seemed to have lain hidden there for a long, long time––something inert, inexorable, indestructible, which, if it ever stirred from its intense stillness, must be reckoned with in years to come.
She made no effort to comprehend what this thing might be––if, indeed, it really existed––no pains to analyse it or to meditate over the vague indications of its presence.