nd with "Honour."'

The old newsvendor led the applause.

'Janet! That woman never spat in a policeman's face.'

'Pull down your veil,' was the lady's sharp response. 'Quick----'

'My----'

'Yes, pull it down, and don't turn round.'

A little dazed by the red-hot torrent the woman on the plinth was still
pouring down on the people, Vida's mind at the word 'veil,' so
peremptorily uttered, reverted by some trick of association to the
Oriental significance of that mark in dress distinctively the woman's.

'Why should I pull down my veil?' she answered abstractedly.

'They're looking this way. Don't turn round. Come, come.'

With a surprising alacrity and skill Mrs. Fox-Moore made her way out of
the throng. Vida, following, yet looking back, heard--

'Now, I want you men to give a fair hearing to a woman who----'

'Vida, _don't_ look! Mercifully, they're too much amused to notice us.'

Disobeying the mandate, the younger woman's eyes fell at last upon the
figures of two young men hovering on the outer circle. The sun caught
their tall, glossy hats, played upon the single flower in the frock
coat, struck on the eyeglass, and gleamed mockingly on the white teeth
of the one who smiled the broadest as they both stood, craning their
necks, whispering and laughing, on the fringe of the crowd.

'Why, it's Dick Farnborough--and that friend of his from the Austrian
Embassy.'

Vida pulled down her veil.

CHAPTER VIII

Devoutly thankful at having escaped from her compromising position
unrecognized, Mrs. Fox-Moore firmly declined to go 'awskin' fur the
vote' again! When Vida gave up her laughing remonstrance, Mrs. Fox-Moore
thought her sister had also given up the idea. But as Vida afterwards
confessed, she told herself that she would go 'just once more.' It could
not be but what she was under some illusion about that queer spectacle.
From one impression each admitted it was difficult to shake herself
free. Whatever those women were or were not, they weren't fools. What
did the leaders (in prison and out), what did they think they were
accomplishing, besides making themselves hideously uncomfortable? The
English Parliament, having flung them out, had gone on with its routine,
precisely as though nothing had happened. _Had_ anything happened? That
was the question. The papers couldn't answer. They were given over to
lies. The bare idea of women pretending to concern themselves with
public affairs--from the poi