s. I'm Winifred Ingate before I'm
anything else. And so long as I'm pretty comfortable no one's going to make
me believe that the world's coming to an end. I know one thing--if we did
get the vote it would take me all my time to keep most of the women I know
from, voting for something silly."

"Winnie," said Audrey. "You're very sensible sometimes."

"I'm always very sensible," Winnie retorted, "until I get nervous. Then I'm
apt to skid."

Without more words they transformed the studio, by a few magical strokes,
from a drawing-room into a bedroom. Audrey, the last to retire,
extinguished the lamp, and tripped to her bed behind her screen. Only a few
slight movements disturbed the silence.

"Winnie," said Audrey suddenly. "I do believe you're one of those awful
people who compromise. You're always right in the middle of the raft."

But Miss Ingate, being fast asleep, offered no answer.

CHAPTER XV

THE RIGHT BANK

The next day, after a studio lunch which contained too much starch and was
deficient in nitrogen, Miss Ingate, putting on her hat and jacket, said
with a caustic gesture:

"Well, I must be off to my life class. And much good may it do me!"

The astonishing creature had apparently begun existence again, and begun it
on the plane of art, but this did not prevent the observer within her from
taking the same attitude towards her second career as she had taken towards
her first. Nothing seemed more meet for Miss Ingate's ironic contemplation
than the daily struggle for style and beauty in the academies of the
Quarter.

Audrey made no reply. The morning had been unusually silent, giving
considerable scope for Miss Ingate's faculty for leaving well alone.

"I suppose you aren't coming out?" added Miss Ingate.

"No. I went out a bit this morning. You know I have my French lesson in
twenty minutes."

"Of course."

Miss Ingate seized her apparatus and departed. The instant she was alone
Audrey began in haste to change into all her best clothes, which were
black, and which the Quarter seldom saw. Fashionably arrayed, she sat down
and wrote a note to Madame Schmitt, her French instructress, to say that
she had been suddenly called away on urgent business, and asking her
nevertheless to count the time as a lesson given. This done, she put her
credit notes and her cheque-book into her handbag, and, leaving the note
with the concierge's wife, who bristled with interesting suspicions, she
vanished into