her to be such a sincere comrade will scarcely credit her baseness. She
ran away with a horrible bourgeois; she was lured away from the Cause by a
bicycle! Yes, Antonietta weighed a bicycle in the scales against the
Social Revolution, and found the Social Revolution wanting! So much for
the idealism of women! Never speak to me of them again. The last we saw of
her she was cycling away in a pair of breeches with a disgusting banker.
She laughed and waved her hand to us mockingly, and before we had time to
utter a word she was gone. I never shall believe in a woman again!"

His indignation choked him at this point, and only the expression of his
mouth and eye told of the depth of scorn and disgust which he felt for the
young lady who had thus unblushingly cycled away from the Social
Revolution.



CHAPTER VII

THE OFFICE OF THE _TOCSIN_


To the ordinary citizen whose walk in life lies along the beaten track
there is a suggestion of Bohemianism about the office of any literary or
propagandist organ; but I doubt whether the most imaginative among them in
their wildest moments have ever conceived any region so far removed from
the conventions of civilised society, so arbitrary in its hours and
customs, so cosmopolitan and so utterly irrational as the office of the
_Tocsin_.

In other chapters I attempt to describe the most noticeable among the