ust such people as you," she repeated, and began in panting
rhetorical sentences to urge the militant cause.

For her it was manifestly a struggle against "the Men." Miss Alimony had
no doubts of her sex. It had nothing to learn, nothing to be forgiven,
it was compact of obscured and persecuted marvels, it needed only
revelation. "They know Nothing," she said of the antagonist males,
bringing deep notes out of the melodious caverns of her voice; "they
know _Nothing_ of the Deeper Secrets of Woman's Nature." Her discourse
of a general feminine insurrection fell in very closely with the spirit
of Lady Harman's private revolt. "We want the Vote," said Agatha, "and
we want the Vote because the Vote means Autonomy. And then----"

She paused voluminously. She had already used that word "Autonomy" at
the lunch table and it came to her hearer to supply a long-felt want.
Now she poured meanings into it, and Lady Harman with each addition
realized more clearly that it was still a roomy sack for more. "A woman
should be absolute mistress of herself," said Miss Alimony, "absolute
mistress of her person. She should be free to develop----"

Germinating phrases these were in Lady Harman's ear.

She wanted to know about the Suffrage movement from someone less
generously impatient than Georgina, for Georgina always lost her temper
about it and to put it fairly _ranted_, this at any rate was serene and
confident, and she asked tentative ill-formed questions and felt her way
among Miss Alimony's profundities. She had her doubts, her instinctive
doubts about this campaign of violence, she doubted its wisdom, she
doubted its rightness, and she perceived, but she found it difficult to
express her perception, that Miss Alimony wasn't so much answering her
objections as trying to swamp her with exalted emotion. And if there was
any flaw whatever in her attention to Miss Alimony's stirring talk, it
was because she was keeping a little look-out in the tail of her eye
for the reappearance of the men, and more particularly for the
reappearance of Mr. Brumley with whom she had a peculiar feeling of
uncompleted relations. And at last the men came and she caught his
glance and saw that her feeling was reciprocated.

She was presently torn from Agatha, who gasped with pain at the parting
and pursued her with a sedulous gaze as a doctor might watch an injected
patient, she parted with Lady Beach-Mandarin with a vast splash of
enthusiasm and mutual