“Please let me say what I have to say,” she said in that shy and gentle way she had when facing hostile listeners.
“Speak louder!” yelled a young man. “Come on, silk-stockings!––spit it out and go home to mother!”
“I wish I could,” she said.
Her rejoinder was so odd and unexpected that stillness settled over the place.
“But all I can do,” she added, in an even, colourless voice, “is to go home. And I shall do that after I have said what I have to say.”
At that moment there was a commotion in the rear of the hall. A dozen policemen filed into the place, pushing their way right and left and ranging themselves along the wall. Their officer came into the aisle:
“If there’s any disorder in this place to-night, I’ll run in the whole bunch o’ ye!” he said calmly.
“All right. Hit out, little girl!” cried the young 354 man who had interrupted before. “We gotta lot of business to fix up after you’ve gone to bed, so get busy!”
“I, also, have some business to fix up,” she said in the same sweet, emotionless voice, “––business of setting myself right by admitting that I have been wrong.
“Because, on this spot where I am standing, I have spoken against the old order of things. I have said that there is no law excepting only the law of Love and Service. I have said that there is no God other than the deathless germ of deity within each one of us. I have said that the conventions and beliefs and usages and customs of civilisation were old, outworn, and tyrannical; and that there was no need to regard them or to obey the arbitrary laws based on them.