Emily," said Vivie, "you look so tired. Aren't you over-trying your
strength? I don't know what you have in hand, but why not postpone
your action till you are quite strong again?"

"I shall never be stronger than I am to-day and it can't be
postponed, cost me what it will," was the reply, while the sad eyes
looked away across the course.

"Well," said Vivie, "I wanted you to know that I was close by,
prepared to back you up if need be. And there are others of our
Union about the place. That young man over there talking to the
policeman is really A---- K---- though she is supposed to be in
prison. Mrs. Tuke is somewhere about, Mrs. Despard is on the Grand
Stand, and Blanche Smith is selling _The Suffragette_."

"Thank you," said Miss Davison, turning round for an instant, and
pressing Vivie's hand, "Good-bye. I hope what I am going to do will
be effectual."

Vivie did not like to prolong the talk in case it should attract
attention. Individual action was encouraged under the W.S.P.U., and
when a member wished to do something on her own, her comrades did
not fuss with advice. So Vivie returned to the Grand Stand.

Presently there was the stir occasioned by the arrival of the Royal
personages. Vivie noted with a little dismay that while she was
wearing a Homburg hat all the men near her wore the black and
glistening topper which has become--or had, for the tyranny of
custom has lifted a little since the War--the conventional head-gear
in which to approach both God and the King. There was a great
raising of these glistening hats, there were grave bows or smiling
acknowledgments from the pavilion. Then every one sat down and the
second event was run.

Still Emily Wilding Davison made no sign. Vivie could just descry
her, still in the front of the crowd, still gazing out over the
course, pressed by the crowd against the broad white rail.

* * * * *

The race of the day had begun. The row of snickering, plunging,
rearing, and curvetting horses had dissolved, as in a kaleidoscope,
into a bunch, and a pear-shaped formation with two or three horses
streaming ahead as the stem of the pear. Then the stem became
separated from the pear-shaped mass by its superior speed, and again
this vertical line of horses formed up once more horizontally,
leaving the mass still farther behind. Then the horses seen from the
Grand Stand disappeared--and after a minute reappeared--three, four,
five--and the