When she had entered her flat she sat down at her desk and scowled¹ more deeply still. She was angry not only at her past agitation² but at her present disappointment. For seven years now, save for brief lapses³, almost forgotten, she had been complete mistress of herself. During the last four she had so far sunk her personality into the great impersonal⁴ cause of her adoption⁵ that she had had no time to moon about herself after the fashion of idle women.

Work! Had that been the secret? How commonplace, and how expositive! Who, indeed, when speaking, planning, fighting, proselytizing⁶, writing innumerable leaflets, newspaper and magazine articles, drilling recruits, attending thousands of meetings, to say nothing of organizing her own union and fighting army, would find a moment’s time to cast a thought to man save as present enemy and future co-worker. Even when in gaol⁷, from which she had been mysteriously released both times at the end of a week, she had deliberately⁸ slept when not writing articles in her head. In America she had not gone farther west than Chicago, but she suddenly realized that if the question of including California in the itinerary⁹ had arisen she should have felt something like panic, possibly the same superstitious¹⁰ fear that had assailed¹¹ her at three pillar boxes four years earlier. Well, indeed, that Tay had sent his contribution. She had no desire to have her work interrupted, nor to go through any female throes. To know that she was still

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