"I spoke to you as I did the other day," said Hagar, "because, somehow, I had that impulse. It was not necessary that I should do so; that of which I spoke had long passed." She rose and walked slowly back and forth in the room. "When I bethought myself, that month in Nassau, of where I--not he--was drifting ... I was able then to leave that current, and leave it not to reënter. That was three years ago. I beg you to believe that that temptation, if it was a temptation, is far behind me. My soul will not return that way, cannot return that way.... And now I simply want to be friends." "I'll meet you there. I like you too much not to want to. You seem to me one of those rare ones who find their lamp and refuge in themselves." "And I like you, extraordinarily. I should like to work with you." "There is nothing," said Rose Darragh, "any easier to arrange than that." CHAPTER XXX AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE In the year 1910, a certain large gathering of suffragists occurring in New York, permission was sought and obtained for speaking in Union Square. Here and there, beneath the trees, sprang temporary tribunes sheathed with bunting the colour of gold; above them banners and banneroles of the same hue, black-lettered, VOTES FOR WOMEN. From each tribune now a woman was speaking, now a man. About speakers and tribunes pressed the crowd, good-natured, commenting, earnest in places. Each speaker had about ten minutes; time up, he or she stepped down; another took position. Sometimes the crowd laughed at a good story or at a barbed shaft skilfully shot; sometimes it applauded; sometimes it indulged in questions. Its units continually shifted; one or more speakers at this stand listened to, it went roaming for pastures new and brought up before the next tribune, whose crowd, roaming in its turn, filled the just vacated spaces. It was a still, pearl-grey mid-afternoon, the pale-brown leaves falling from the trees, the roar of the city softened, the square's frontier lines of tall buildings withdrawn, a little blurred, made looming and poetic. All was a picture, lightly shifting with gleams of gold and a woman's voice, earnest, lilting. The crowd increased until there was a great crowd. VOTES FOR WOMEN--VOTES FOR WOMEN--said the banners and the banneroles. A man and a woman, leaving a taxicab on the Broadway facet of the Square, stood a moment upon the pavement. "What a crowd!" said the man. "There is speaking of some kind." He stopped a boy. "What is going on?" "Suffragettes! Women speaking. Want ter vote. Ain't got no husbands.--_I_ wouldn't let 'em! Say, ain't they gettin' too big for their places?" The boy stuck out his tongue and went away. "Young hoodlum!" exclaimed the man with disgust. "Let us stay and hear them for a while. I never have." "All right!--I'll pay the cab." He came back to her, and they moved across and under the trees. "Are you interested?"