She was her brother Michael, refusing to go to the party; refusing to run with the school herd, holding out for his private soul against other people who kept him from remembering. Only Michael did not hold out. He ran away. She would stay, on the edge of the vortex, fascinated by its danger, and resisting. But as she looked at them, at Rosalind with her open mouth, at the Blackadder girl who was scowling horribly, and at Valentina Gilchrist, sceptical and quizzical, she laughed. The three had been trying to rush her, and because they couldn't rush her they were questioning her honour. She had asked them plainly for a plain meaning, and their idea of apt repartee was to pretend to question her honour. Perhaps they really did question it. She didn't care. She loathed their excited, silly, hurrying suspicion; but she didn't care. It was she who had drawn them and led them on to this display of incomparable idiocy. Like her brother Nicholas she found that adversity was extremely funny; and she laughed. She was no longer Michael, she was Nicky, not caring, delighting in her power to fool them. "You think," she said, "I'd no business to find out?" "Your knowledge would certainly have been mysterious," said the Secretary; "unless at least two confidences had been betrayed. Supposing there had been any secret policy." "Well, you see, I don't know it; and I didn't invent it; and I didn't find it out--precisely. Your secret policy is the logical conclusion of your present policy. I deduced it; that's all. Anybody could have done the same. Does that satisfy you? (They won't love me any better for making them look fools!)" "Thank you," said Miss Gilchrist. "We only wanted to be sure." The dinner-bell rang as Dorothy was defining her position. "I'll work for you; I'll speak for you; I'll write for you; I'll fight for you. I'll make hay of every Government meeting, if I can get in without lying and sneaking for it. I'll go to prison for you, if I can choose my own crime. But I won't give up my liberty of speech and thought and action. I won't pledge myself to obey your orders. I won't pledge myself not to criticize policy I disapprove of. I won't come on your Committee, and I won't join your Union. Is that clear and precise enough?" Somebody clapped and somebody said, "Hear, Hear!" And somebody said, "Go it, Dorothy!" It was Anthony and Frances and Captain Drayton, who paused outside the door on their way to the dining-room, and listened, basely. * * * * * They were all going now. Dorothy stood at the door, holding it open for them, glad that it was all over. Only Phyllis Desmond, the art-student, lingered. Dorothy reminded her that they had met at her aunt Vera Harrison's house. The art-student smiled. "I wondered when you were going to remember." "I did, but they all called you Desmond. That's what put me out." "Everybody calls me Desmond. You had a brother or something with you, hadn't you?"