"Yes, we'll do that," she said competently, and looked after him with
smiling eyes. "Oh, he looks most adventurous!" she thought. "I wonder,
now, if he's ever killed a man?"


II

"Is my frock hooked up all the way down?" wondered Ellen, as she stood
with her back to a pillar in the Synod Hall. "Not that I care a button
about it myself, but for the sake of the Cause...." But that small worry
was just one dark leaf floating on the quick sunlit river of her mind,
for she was very happy and excited at these Suffrage meetings. She had
taken seven shillings and sixpence for pamphlets, the hall was filling
up nicely, and Miss Traquair and Dr. Katherine Kennedy and Miss
Mackenzie and several members of the local militant suffrage society had
spoken to her as they went to their places just as if they counted her
grown-up and one of themselves. And she was flushed with the sense of
love and power that comes of comradeship. She looked back into the
hideous square hall, with its rows of chattering anticipant people, and
up to the gallery packed with faces dyed yellowish drab by the near
unmitigated gas sunburst, and she smiled brilliantly. All these people
were directing their attention and enthusiasm to the same end as
herself: would feel no doubt the same tightness of throat as the heroic
women came on the platform, and would sanctify the emotion as sane by
sharing it; and by their willingness to co-operate in rebellion were
making her individual rebellious will seem less like a schoolgirl's
penknife and more like a soldier's sword. "I'm being a politikon Zoon!"
she boasted to herself. She had always liked the expression when she
read it in _The Scotsman_ Leaders.