England -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
"Here!" said the second loud man. "Here, misses. Get on the wheel. They'll
never get ye if ye sit in the middle back to back." He jumped on to the
wheel himself, and indicated the mathematical centre. Jane took the
suggestion in a flash; Audrey was obedient. They fixed themselves under
directions, dropping the megaphone. The wheel started, and the megaphone
rattled across its smooth surface till it was shot off. A policeman ran in,
and hesitated; another man, in plain clothes, and wearing a rosette, ran
in.
"That's them," said the rosette. "I saw her with the grey hair from the
gallery."
The policeman sprang on to the wheel, and after terrific efforts fell
sprawling and was thrown off. The rosette met the same destiny. A second
policeman appeared, and with the fearless courage of his cloth, undeterred
by the spectacle of prostrate forms, made a magnificent dash, and was
equally floored.
As Audrey sat very upright, pressing her back against the back of Jane
Foley and clutching at Jane Foley's skirts with her hands behind her--the
locked pair were obliged thus to hold themselves exactly over the axis of
the wheel, for the slightest change of position would have resulted in
their being flung to the circumference and into the blue grip of the
law--she had visions of all her life just as though she had been drowning.
She admitted all her follies and wondered what madness could have prompted
her remarkable escapades both in Paris and out of it. She remembered Madame
Piriac's prophecy. She was ready to wish the past year annihilated and
herself back once more in parental captivity at Moze, the slave of an
unalterable routine imposed by her father, without responsibility, without
initiative and without joy. And she lived again through the scenes in which
she had smiled at the customs official, fibbed to Rosamund, taken the
wounded Musa home in the taxi, spoken privily with the ageing yacht-owner,
and laughed at the drowned detective in the area of the palace in Paget
Gardens.
Everything happened in her mind while the wheel went round once, showing
her in turn to the various portions of the audience, and bringing her at
length to a second view of the sprawling policemen. Whereupon she thought
queerly: "What do I care about the vote, really?" And finally she thought
with anger and resentment: "What a shame it is that women haven't got the
vote!" And then she heard a gay, quiet sound. It was Jane Foley laughing
gently behind her.
"Can you see the big one now, darling?" asked Jane roguishly. "Has he
picked himself up again?"
Audrey laughed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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