Mrs. Rust made a great effort. She became extremely red. “Don’t you understand, girl, you must come?” she shouted. “I can’t spare you.... I like you....” She cleared her throat and changed her voice. “Can’t sew ... buttons ... companion ... large salary....” But the first part of the sentence reached Courtesy’s sympathy. She jumped into the launch. The gardener stood on the hot wharf, and his heart turned upside down. His plans were stripped from him once more by this disgracefully militant creature who had broken into his life. He hovered on the brink of several thoughts at once. “The little fool. The dear little thing. The little devil.” He ran round the customs house. He felt convinced that it was interposing its broad person between him and his suffragette. He could almost see it dodging to hide her from his sight. “I shall find her in a minute,” he thought. “I’m a lucky man.” He thought that his hopes were pinned to the probability of arriving on the _Caribbeania_ in time. On the brown grass space there were only the goats. The gardener was astonished not to see the fleeing form of a woman making for the town. Things can be done very quickly if they must. The gardener was at the corner of the main street before he had time to think another thought. He looked back, and saw in one fevered glance the launch only just parting from the shore. “Have you seen a lady in white with a brown hat?” he asked of a policeman. “Yes, please, sah.” “Which way?” The conversation was from beginning to end above the policeman’s head. But such a very hot buckra man must be humoured. At random the policeman pointed up the main street. The gardener was indeed a man of luck, for that was the right direction. The main street on a fiery afternoon was as long as eternity, but in certain states of mind a man may bridge eternity in a breath, and not know what he has crossed. He was on the race-course. He looked back and the launch was approaching the _Caribbeania_ in the far-off bay, like a dwarf panting defiance at a giant. When he was half-way across the race-course, he saw a white figure surmounted by a brown straw hat, in the Botanical Gardens, in the shade of a banyan tree. The suffragette had lighted a cigarette in a laborious attempt to appear calm, but she pressed her hand to her breast as though she had been running. “I’m not coming,” she shouted, when he was within shouting distance. He vaulted the railing of the race-course, and the railing of the garden. “What a bore!” he said. “Then I must stop too.” “Why?” she asked. Very far off, the launch was nestling at the side of the _Caribbeania_. “For reasons I cannot be bothered to repeat to you.” She veiled herself in a cloud of smoke. “You know,” he added, “this is a repetition of the Elizabeth Hammer episode. Pure hysteria. Darling.” There was an appreciable pause. “Why, you’re right. So it is,” said the suffragette. “Come on,” shouted the gardener. “We can catch it yet.”