“My dearest friend, you have my sympathy.”
Under the cover of our rugs I felt her strong capable hand steal to meet mine. Here was a fine, lofty soul who could solace and understand me. This big, handsome woman, with the cool, crisp voice, with the clear, calm eye, with the features of confidence and command, was surely one on whom a heart-broken world-weary man could lean a little in his hour of weakness and trouble. I returned the pressure of that large firm hand, and, moved by an emotion I could no longer suppress, I turned and dived below.
There is no matchmaker like the Atlantic Ocean; and so as the days went on I grew more and more taken with the idea of espousing Boadicea. As we sat there in our steamer chairs and watched the shrill wind whip the billow peaks to spray, and the sudden rainbows gleam in the silvery spendrift I listened to her arguments in favour of the Suffrage and they seemed to me unanswerable. I, too, became inspired with a fierce passion to devote my life to the Cause, to enter and throw myself in the struggle of sex, to play my humble part in the Woman’s War. And in Boadicea I had found my Joan of Arc.
So as we shook hands on the New York pier we had every intention of seeing one another again.
“You have helped me greatly with your noble sympathy,” I said.
“You have cheered me greatly with your splendid understanding,” she answered.
“We are comrades.”
“Yes, we are good comrades—in the Cause.”
She had to go West on a lecturing tour, and it was some months before I saw her again. When I did, my first words were:
“Boadicea, I’m a free man.”