ions people of Ann
Veronica's temperament take at times--to the girl in the next cell to
her own. She was a large, resilient girl, with a foolish smile, a still
more foolish expression of earnestness, and a throaty contralto voice.
She was noisy and hilarious and enthusiastic, and her hair was always
abominably done. In the chapel she sang with an open-lunged gusto that
silenced Ann Veronica altogether, and in the exercising-yard slouched
round with carelessly dispersed feet. Ann Veronica decided that
"hoydenish ragger" was the only phrase to express her. She was always
breaking rules, whispering asides, intimating signals. She became at
times an embodiment for Ann Veronica of all that made the suffrage
movement defective and unsatisfying.

She was always initiating petty breaches of discipline. Her greatest
exploit was the howling before the mid-day meal. This was an imitation
of the noises made by the carnivora at the Zoological Gardens at
feeding-time; the idea was taken up by prisoner after prisoner until
the whole place was alive with barkings, yappings, roarings, pelican
chatterings, and feline yowlings, interspersed with shrieks of
hysterical laughter. To many in that crowded solitude it came as an
extraordinary relief. It was better even than the hymn-singing. But it
annoyed Ann Veronica.

"Idiots!" she said, when she heard this pandemonium, and with particular
reference to this young lady with the throaty contralto next door.
"Intolerable idiots!..."

It took some days for this phase to pass, and it left some scars and
something like a decision. "Violence won't do it," said Ann Veronica.
"Begin violence, and the woman goes under....

"But all the rest of our case is right.... Yes."

As the long, solitary days wore on, Ann Veronica found a number of
definite attitudes and conclusions in her mind.

One of these was a classification of women into women who are and women
who are not hostile to men. "The real reason why I am out of place
here," she said, "is because I like men. I can talk with them. I've
never found them hostile. I've got no feminine class feeling. I don't
want any laws or freedoms to protect me from a man like Mr. Capes. I
know that in my heart I would take whatever he gave....

"A woman wants a proper alliance with a man, a man who is better stuff
than herself. She wants that and needs it more than anything else in
the world. It may not be just, it may not be fair, but things are so. It
i