I am afraid I have digressed. It is much harder to write a thing than to tell it. I used to write stories for our Journal at school and the girls were mad over them. But they were love stories, and this one deals with English politics and criminals--yes, you might call it a crime story. Of course there is love, too, but it comes in rather unexpectedly. I left Daphne hopping three steps each way in triumph. Well, after that she did not take me around with her, although her friends came in and talked about The Cause to me quite often. And gradually I began to see that there was something to it, and why, if I paid taxes, shouldn't I vote? And hadn't I as much intelligence as the cab drivers and street sweepers? And why couldn't I will my money to my children if I ever had any?--children, not money. Of course, as Father pointed out afterward, I should have been using my abilities in America; but most of the American women I knew were so cravenly and abjectly contented. But even after my conversion Daphne would not take me in the balloon. She said I represented too much money to risk dumping in the Thames or hanging on a chimney. The meeting at Daphne's was mainly to talk over the failure of the balloon ascension and to plan something new. But the actual conspiracy that followed was really an accident. It came about in the most casual way. Violet Harcourt-Standish got up and went to the mirror to put on her veil, and some of the people began to gather their wraps. "I'm tired," Daphne said suddenly. "We don't seem to get anywhere. We always come out the door we go in." "Sometimes forcibly," Poppy said to me aside. "And I haven't been strong, you know, since last summer," Daphne went on. Everybody nodded sympathetically. Daffie had raised a disturbance when Royalty was laying a cornerstone and had been jailed for it. (They put her to making bags and she sewed "Votes for Women" in white thread on every bag she made.) "I am going to take Madge down to Ivry for a week." I am Madge. Violet turned from the mirror and raised her eyebrows. "Ivry!" she said. "How familiar it sounds! Do you remember, Daphne, when pressure at the Hall became too strong for me, how I used to ride over to Ivry and have hysterics in the Tudor Room? And how once I wept on your Louis-Seize divan and had to have the purple stains bleached off my face? You lived a sort of vicarious matrimonial existence in those days, didn't you?" Whatever she may have done to the Louis-Seize divan in earlier days, she was cheerful enough now, and I hailed her with delight. "Do you live near Ivry?" I exclaimed. "How jolly! That is English; I am frightfully English in my speech after a few weeks in London." Somebody laughed and Daphne chuckled. It isn't especially feminine to chuckle, but neither is Daphne.