"Sit down," said Bethune grimly. "You've got another couple of hours." He glanced up at the clock. "I went there this afternoon--to enquire for Mrs. Uniacke. Lucky I did!--I found Roddy and he poured out the whole story. It seems that Jill, to save her mother, offered at last to go instead. She's only to yell 'Votes for Women'--or some such infernal nonsense. But think of her in that mob--already savage about the fire. Welsh miners--you know what they are?" "Good Lord!" McTaggart looked stunned. "And you mean her mother let her go?--a child like that..." "She's hardly a child." Bethune took him up sharply. "I suppose she thought it would force her to join--become a suffragette herself. Anyhow it's a dirty trick." He pushed the open time-table across. "There's a train at midnight. You get to D---- in time for breakfast--two hours to wait--and then by a branch line to L----. The meeting's a few miles out. It's fixed for twelve o'clock sharp. You can _just_ do it--that's all. Will you go?" He stared across at McTaggart, his pale face twitching a little. "Of course! Why? What d'you think?" He paused for a moment, digesting the news, then glanced up at Bethune with a puzzled look after a quick survey of the time-table. "I wonder you didn't go yourself--follow at once by the five train. You might have stopped her before the meeting. Why on earth did you wait for me?" There came a curious little silence. Then Bethune rose to his feet, with a restless movement, and walked across to the open window. He pulled up the blind and stared out, his back to McTaggart. "I couldn't." His voice was hoarse and strained. "She wouldn't have thanked me for coming." "Nonsense!--Jill isn't like that. Besides--she likes you awfully--she's told me so, heaps of times, and the way you helped in that prison business." But Bethune made no reply. Something about the man's attitude struck a note of discouragement, and McTaggart--full of impatience--let fall a vexed: "Well?" "If you want to know," said Bethune at last, "I suppose you'd better ... anyhow! I asked Jill to marry me--some days ago. That's why." Sheer amazement seized McTaggart. Then, from no apparent cause, anger stirred: a faint disgust, tempered by a grim amusement. "You asked ... Jill ... to marry you?" "Why not?" ... At the sound of his voice the other wheeled round suddenly--"What's it got to do with _you_?" And in a flash the friendship of years crumbled up--here were rivals! They faced each other, primitive men, ready to fight for the sake of a woman. "Look here--McTaggart"--Bethune came back to where the former still sat, elbows resting on the table, one hand gripping the "A.B.C."--"There's no need to speak like that! I've played fair. By God--I have!"