Olivia’s gasp of surprise was followed by a gurgle of laughter which shook her lifted cup so that it spilled. The sight of a stained skirt drew from her a sharp exclamation of dismay. Agnes Blenkiron disengaging herself from the cluster round the tea-table came to the rescue. What was the matter? Olivia explained. “Oh, my dear,” said Agnes, “I ought to have told you. It’s my fault. Dawkins is such a touchy old thing. Roger, of course, is my brother—didn’t you know? And _The Signal_ is our weekly. Dawkins is the editor.” “I’m awfully sorry,” said Olivia, “but ought I to read _The Signal_?” “Why, of course,” replied Agnes Blenkiron intensely. “Everybody ought to read it. It’s the only periodical that matters in London.” Olivia felt the remorse of those convicted of an unpardonable crime. “I’ll get a copy to-morrow at the bookstall at Victoria Station.” Agnes smiled in her haggard way. “My dear, an organ like _The Signal_ doesn’t lie on the bookstalls, like _Comic Cuts_ or _The Fortnightly Review_. It’s posted to private subscribers, or it’s given away at meetings.” “Who pays for the printing of it?” asked the practical Olivia, who had learned from Triona something of the wild leap in cost of printed matter. “Aubrey Dawkins finds the money. He gets it in the City. He has given up his heart and soul to _The Signal_.” “I’ve made an enemy for life,” said Olivia penitently. Miss Blenkiron reassured her. “Oh, no you haven’t. We haven’t time for enemy making here. Our business is too important.” Olivia in a maze asked: “What is your business?” “Why, my dear child, the Social Revolution. Didn’t you know?” “Not a bit,” said Olivia. She learned many astonishing things that afternoon, as she was swayed about from introduction to introduction among the eagerly disputing groups. Hitherto she had thought, with little comprehension, of the world-spread social unrest. Strikes angered her because they interfered with necessary reconstruction and only set the working classes in a vicious circle chasing high wages and being chased in their turn by high prices. At other demands she shuddered, dimly dreading the advent of Bolshevism. And there she left it. She had imagined that revolutionary doctrines were preached to factory hands either secretly by rat-faced agents, or by brass-throated, bull-necked demagogues. That they should be accepted as a common faith by a crowd of people much resembling a fairly well-to-do suburban church congregation stirred her surprise and even dismay. “I don’t see how intelligent folk can hold such views,” she said to Roger Blenkiron, who had been defending the Russian Soviet system as a philosophic experiment in government. He smiled indulgently. “Doesn’t the fault lie rather in you, dear lady, than in the intelligent folk?” “Would that argument stand,” she replied, “if you had been maintaining that the earth was flat and stood still in space?”