'Our women are wonderful!' she lifted her tired head. 'I knew they'd never had a chance to show what they were, but there are some things---- No! I didn't think women had it in them.' She had got up and was standing now by the door, her limp gown clinging round her, her weather-beaten Tam on one side. But in the confident look with which she spoke of 'our women,' the brow had cleared. You saw that it was beautiful. Miss Levering stood at the door with an anxious eye on the stair, as if fearful of the home-coming of 'her fellow-coward,' or, direr catastrophe--old Mr. Fox-Moore's discovering the damning fact of this outlaw's presence under his roof! Yet, even so, torn thus between dread and desire to pluck out the heart of the new mystery, 'the militant woman,' Miss Levering did not speed the parting guest. As though recognizing fully now that the prophesied use was not going to be made of the 'thin end of the wedge,' she detained her with-- 'I wonder when I shall see you again.' 'I don't know,' said the other, absently. 'When is the next meeting?' 'Next Sunday. Every Sunday.' 'I shall be glad to hear you speak again; but--you'll come and see me--here.' 'I can't. I'm going away.' 'Oh! To rest, I hope.' 'Rest?' She laughed at an idea so comic. 'Oh, no. I'm going to work among the women in Wales. We have great hopes of those West-country women. They're splendid! They're learning the secret of co-operation, too. Oh, it's good stuff to work on--the relief of it after London!' Miss Levering smiled. 'Then I won't be seeing you very soon.' 'No.' She seemed to be thinking. 'It's true what I say of the Welsh women, and yet we oughtn't to be ungrateful to our London women either.' She seemed to have some sense of injustice on her soul. 'We've been seeing just recently what they're made of, too!' She paused on the threshold and began to tell in a low voice of women 'new to the work,' who had been wavering, uncertain if they could risk imprisonment--poor women with husbands and children. 'When they heard _what it might mean_--this battle we're fighting--they were ashamed not to help us!' 'You mean----' Vida began, shrinking. 'Yes!' said the other, fiercely. 'The older women saw they ought to save the younger ones from having to face that sort of thing. That was how we got some of the wives and mothers.' She went on with a stern emotion that was oddly contagious, telling about a certain scene at the Headquarters of the Union. Against the grey and squalid background of a Poor Women's movement, stood out in those next seconds a picture that the true historian who is to come will not neglect. A call for recruits with this result--a huddled group, all new, unproved, ignorant of the ignorant. The two or three leaders, conscience-driven, feeling it necessary to explain to the untried women that if they shared in the agitation, they were not only facing imprisonment, but unholy handling.