To lose the outline of my soul
Against the greyness of the sea.
CHAPTER II
The suffragette went up to London on Monday—Bank Holiday—to contemplate finally the ruin of her work. For it was dead. I suppose if she had not felt so old and tired she might have thought of a fresh beginning, but she was always more passionate than persistent.
I don’t think the Brown Borough ever made her suffer so much as it did the day she came back to it and found no place for her. You must remember she had always put work before pleasure, and a new joy born had no place in her mind with the pain of work killed. The gardener of yesterday retreated from the foreground of her mind, and for a while she never thought at all of the gardener of to-morrow.
Henceforward we part company with that suffragette whom I have loved perhaps a good deal, and of whom you have wearied. Her heart seemed to take on a different colour as she returned for the last time to the Brown Borough. What she had preached for years conquered her beyond hope at last, the world she had fought became suddenly victor.
She went to Jenny Wigsky, and found her gone.
She went to see ’Tilda, who was out. But ’Tilda’s mother spoke out ’Tilda’s mind.
She went to see the priest’s sister, and she was away for Easter. But the priest was at home.
“I had no wish ever to see you again,” said the priest. “But it is as well that we should meet, for I should like to make my position and that of my sister perfectly clear to you, yerce, yerce.”