Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Great Britain -- Fiction
"That's what I wanted to tell you about. The things that came to me were
so much bigger than the thing I went in for. I could see all along we
weren't going to get it that way. And I knew we _were_ going to get it
some other way. I don't in the least know how, but it'll be some big,
tremendous way that'll make all this fighting and fussing seem the
rottenest game. That was one of the things I used to think about."
"Then," he said, "you've given it up? You're corning out of it?"
She looked at him keenly. "Are those still your conditions?"
He hesitated one second before he answered firmly. "Yes, those are still
my conditions. You still won't agree to them?"
"I still won't agree. It's no use talking about it. You don't believe in
freedom. We're incompatible. We don't stand for the same ideals."
"Oh, Lord, what _does_ that matter?"
"It matters most awfully."
"I should have thought," said Drayton, "it would have mattered more if
I'd had revolting manners or an impediment in my speech or something."
"It wouldn't, _really_."
"Well, you seem to have thought about a lot of things. Did you ever once
think about me, Dorothy?"
"Yes, I did. Have you ever read the Psalms? There's a jolly one that
begins: 'Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to
war and my fingers to fight.' I used to think of you when I read that. I
thought of you a lot.
"That's what I was coming to. It was the queerest thing of all.
Everything seemed ended when I went to prison. I knew you wouldn't care
for me after what I'd done--you must really listen to this, Frank--I
knew you couldn't and wouldn't marry me; and it somehow didn't matter.
What I'd got hold of was bigger than that. I knew that all this Women's
Suffrage business was only a part of it, a small, ridiculous part.
"I sort of saw the redeemed of the Lord. They were men, as well as
women, Frank. And they were all free. They were all free because they
were redeemed. And the funny thing was that you were part of it. You
were mixed up in the whole queer, tremendous business. Everything was
ended. And everything was begun; so that I knew you understood even when
you didn't understand. It was really as if I'd got you tight, somehow;
and I knew you couldn't go, even when you'd gone."
"And yet you don't see that it's a crime to force me to go."
"I see that it would be a worse crime to force you to stay if you mean
going.
"What time is it?"
"A quarter to eight."
"And I've got to go home and have a bath. Whatever you do, don't make me
late for that infernal banquet. You _are_ going to drive me there?"
"I'm going to drive you there, but I'm not going in with you."
"Poor darling! Did I ask you to go in?"
He drove her back to her father's house. She came out of it burnished
and beautiful, dressed in clean white linen, with the broad red, white
and blue tricolour of the Women's Franchise Union slanting across
her breast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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