needles, tortured him.
Michael looked beautiful in his martyrdom. His fair, handsome face was
set clear and hard. His yellow hair, with its hard edges, fitted his
head like a cap of solid, polished metal. Weariness and disgust made a
sort of cloud over his light green eyes. When Nicky looked at him
Nicky's face twitched and twinkled. But he hated it almost as much as
Michael hated it.

She thought of Michael and Nicholas. They hated it, and yet they stuck
it out. They wouldn't go back on her. She and Lady Victoria Threlfall
were to march on foot before the Car of Victory from Blackfriars Bridge
along the Embankment, through Trafalgar Square and Pall Mall and
Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner. And Michael and Nicholas would march
beside them to hold up the poles of the standard which, after all, they
were not strong enough to carry.

She thought of Drayton who had not stuck it out. And at the same time
she thought of the things that had come to her in her prison cell. She
had told him the most real thing that had ever happened to her, and he
had not listened. He had not cared. Michael would have listened. Michael
would have cared intensely.

She thought, "'I am not come to bring peace, but a sword.'" The sword
was between her and her lover.

She had given him up. She had chosen, not between him and the Vortex,
but between him and her vision which was more than either of them or
than all this.

She looked at Rosalind and Maud Blackadder who sang violently in the
hall below her. She had chosen freedom. She had given up her lover. She
wondered whether Rosalind or the Blackadder girl could have done as
much, supposing they had had a choice?

Then she looked at Veronica.

Veronica was standing between Michael and Nicholas. She was slender and
beautiful and pure, like some sacrificial virgin. Presently she would be
marching in the Procession. She would carry a thin, tall pole, with a
round olive wreath on the top of it, and a white dove sitting in the
ring of the olive wreath. And she would look as if she was not in the
Procession but in another place.

When Dorothea looked at her she was lifted up above the insane ecstasy
and the tumult of the herd-soul. Her soul and the soul of Veronica went
alone in utter freedom.

Follow on! Follow on!

For Faith's our spear and Hope's our sword,
And Love's our mighty battle-lord.
Follow on! Follow on!

And Justice is our flag unfurled,
The flam