vie at last found herself--or Mr.
Michaelis did--in the snug little bedroom that knew her chiefly in
her male form.

Here she was destined to lie up for several weeks till the feet and
the chest were healed and sound again. Hither by the normal entrance
came a woman suffragette surgeon to heal, and Vivie's woman clerk to
act as secretary; whilst Adams typed away in the outer office on Mr.
Michaelis's business or went on long and mysterious errands. Hither
also came the little maid from the Lilacs, bringing needed changes
of clothes, letters, and messages from Honoria. A stout young man
with a fresh colour went up in the lift at No. 94 to the flat or
office of "Algernon Mainwaring," and then skipped along the winding
way between the chimney stacks and up and down short iron ladders
till he too reached the parapet, entered through the opened
casement, and revealed himself as a great W.S.P.U. leader, costumed
like Vivie as a male, but in reality a buxom young woman only
waiting for the Vote to be won to espouse her young man--shop
steward--and begin a large family of children. From this leader,
Vivie received humbly the strictest injunctions to engage in no more
disabling work for the present, to keep out of police clutches and
the risk of going to prison or of attracting too much police
attention at 88-90 Chancery Lane. "You are our brain-centre at
present. Our offices for show and for raiding by the police have
been at Clifford's Inn and are now in Lincoln's Inn. But the really
precious information we possess is ... well, you know where it is:
walls may have ears ... your time for public testimony hasn't come
yet ... we'll let you know fast enough when it has and _you_ won't
flinch, _I'm_ quite sure..."

As a matter of fact, though Vivie's intelligence and inventiveness,
her knowledge of criminal law, of lawyers and of city business, her
wide education, her command of French (improved by the frequent
trips to Brussels--where indeed she deposited securely in her
mother's keeping some of the funds and the more remarkable documents
of the Suffrage cause) and her possession of monetary supplies were
not to be despised: as a figure-head, she was of doubtful value.
There was always that mother in the background. If Vivie was in
court for a suffrage offence of a grave character the prosecuting
Counsel would be sure to rake up the "notorious Mrs. Warren" and
drag in the White Slave Traffic, to bewilder a jury and throw
discr