“What do we do now?” sobbed the poetess.
“We walk on,” said the suffragette, and took her, not very gently, by the arm.
“But I can’t, I can’t. It may happen again,” wailed the poetess. “Policeman, can’t I go home?”
“Yes, miss,” said the policeman, wiping his brow.
“But there are no taxis.”
“No, miss,” said the policeman.
You never can tell what strange thing you may do at a crisis. The poetess slipped a confiding hand into that of the policeman, and walked meekly by his side.
“Murderers ...” exclaimed the little mother. “They might ’ev done biby in. Your ’ead’s bleedin’, miss. So’s my gum, but I kin swaller that.”
The suffragette felt as if she had been divided in two. Her militant spirit, clothed in its hair shirt, seemed to be moving at a height, undaunted, monopolised as usual by the splendour of its cause. And below, very near the dust, a terribly tired woman, a unit among several hundreds of other terribly tired women, put one foot before the other along an endless road.
You must stride over a gap here, as the procession did mentally. For a very long time I don’t think anybody thought anything except—“How long, O Lord, how long?”