nything...."

"Yes?" asked Lady Harman.

"Is there----Is there someone else?"

"Someone else?" Lady Harman was crimson.

"On _your_ side!"

"Someone else on my side?"

"I mean--someone. A man perhaps? Some man that you care for? More than
you do for your husband?..."

"_I can't imagine_," whispered Lady Harman, "_anything_----" And left
her sentence unfinished. Her breath had gone. Her indignation was
profound.

"Then I can't understand why you should find it so important to come
away."

Lady Harman could offer no elucidation.

"You see," said Miss Alimony, with an air of expert knowledge, "our case
against our opponents is just exactly their great case against us. They
say to us when we ask for the Vote, 'the Woman's Place is the Home.'
'Precisely,' we answer, 'the Woman's Place _is_ the Home. _Give_ us our
Homes!' Now _your_ place is your home--with your children. That's where
you have to fight your battle. Running away--for you it's simply running
away."

"But----If I stay I shall be beaten." Lady Harman surveyed her hostess
with a certain dismay. "Do you understand, Agatha? I _can't_ go back."

"But my dear! What else can you do? What had you thought?"

"You see," said Lady Harman, after a little struggle with that childish
quality in her nerves that might, if it wasn't controlled, make her eyes
brim. "You see, I didn't expect you quite to take this view. I thought
perhaps you might be disposed----If I could have stayed with you here,
only for a little time, I could have got some work or something----"

"It's so dreadful," said Miss Alimony, sitting far back with the
relaxation of infinite regrets. "It's dreadful."

"Of course if you don't see it as I do----"

"I can't," said Miss Alimony. "I can't."

She turned suddenly upon her visitor and grasped her knees with her
shapely hands. "Oh let me implore you! Don't run away. Please for my
sake, for all our sakes, for the sake of Womanhood, don't run away! Stay
at your post. You mustn't run away. You must _not_. If you do, you admit
everything. Everything. You must fight in your home. It's _your_ home.
That is the great principle you must grasp,--it's not his. It's there
your duty lies. And there are your children--_your_ children, your
little ones! Think if you go--there may be a fearful fuss--proceedings.
Lawyers--a search. Very probably he will take all sorts of proceedings.
It will be a Matrimonial Case. How can I be associated with that? We
m