"How should I?"

"You sometimes do."

"So do other people."

"You sometimes know where she is when other people don't--and when you've no better grounds for knowing than other people."

He was still sitting on the bed in _deshabille_, his hands clasped round his bare knees and his head bowed down and resting on his hands.

For a moment he looked up into my face, then dropped his head again without speaking.

"You remember what happened at Brandon Court?" I persisted.

"Guess-work," he answered.

"Nonsense!"

"Well, what other explanation do you offer?"

"I don't know; you've got some extra sensitiveness where Sylvia's concerned. Call it the Sixth Sense, if you like."

"There _is_ no Sixth Sense. I thought Nigel disposed of that fallacy at Brandon."

"Not to my satisfaction--or yours."

The Seraph jumped up and began to dress.

"Well, anyway I don't know where she is now," he observed.

"Meaning that you did once?"

"You _say_ I did."

"You know you did."

"There's not much sign of it now."

"May be in abeyance. It may come back."

I watched him spend an unduly long time selecting and rejecting dress-socks.

"It won't come back as long as the connection's broken at her end," I heard him murmur.

CHAPTER X

THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION

"Selina! The time has arrived to impart The covert design of my passionate heart.

No vulgar solicitudes torture my breast, No common ambition deprives me of rest....

My soul is absorbed in a scheme as sublime As ever was carved on the tablets of time.

To-morrow, at latest, through London shall ring The echo and crash of a notable thing.

I start from my fetters, I scorn to be dumb, Selina! the Hour and the Woman are come...

Hither to the rescue, ladies!

Let not fear your spirits vex.

On the plan by me that made is Hangs the future of your sex...

Shall she then be left to mourn her Isolation and her shame?

Come in troops round Hyde Park Corner, Every true Belgravian dame."

SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN: "The Modern Ecclesiazusae."

I ought to have known better than to go round to Cadogan Square next morning. Bereaved families, like swarming bees, are best left alone; and I knew beforehand that I could render no assistance. At the same time, I felt it would be unfriendly to treat Sylvia's disappearance as part of the trivial round and common task, especially after my overnight conversation with Philip. And if I could bring back any news to the Seraph, I knew I should be more than compensated for my journey.

Save for its master and mistress, I found the house deserted. Philip had organised himself into one search party, Robin into another: Nigel Rawnsley appeared to be successfully usurping authority at Scotland Yard, and from Sloane Street and Chiswick respectively Gartside and Culling paced slowly to a central place of meeting. Every shopkeeper, loafer, postman, and hawker along the route was subjected to searching inquisition: the car, its passenger, and black-bearded driver were described and re-described. My two detective friends from Henley, as I afterwards found out, passed a cheerful day at headquarters, drinking down unsweetened reprimands and striving to explain the difficulties of protecting a young woman who refused to be shadowed.

I admired the way Arthur Roden took punishment. When armchair critics scoff at a generation of opportunist politicians, I think of him--and of Rawnsley, who suffered first and longest. Their public pronouncements never wavered; the Suffrage must be opposed and defeated on its own merits or demerits, and no attacks on property, no menaces to person could shake them from what they regarded as a national duty. Even if I chose to think old Rawnsley's mechanical, cold-blooded inhumanity extended to the members of his own family, it would be impossible to charge Jefferson with indifference to his only child, or Roden with want of affection towards his only daughter. I know of no girl who exacted as much admiring devotion from the members of her own family as Sylvia: or one who repaid the exaction so generously.

Their wives were even more uncompromising than the Ministers. I have no doubt the New Militants thought to strike at the fathers through the mothers, and the reasoning seemed tolerably sound. I admit I expected at first to find Mrs. Rawnsley and Mrs. Jefferson calling for quarter before their husbands, and if the New Militants miscalculated, I miscalculated with them. I had not expected their policy of abduction to arouse much active sympathy, but the bitter, uncompromising resentment it evoked far surpassed my anticipations.

Had the perpetrators been discovered, I believe they would have been lynched in the street; and without going to such lengths, I feel confident that the mothers themselves would have sacrificed their own children rather than yield a single inch to women who had so outraged every maternal instinct. Had their own feelings inclined to surrender, Rawnsley, Jefferson, and Roden would have surrendered only over their wives' bodies.

"We shall go on exactly as before," Arthur told me when I asked his plans. "The enemy has varied its usual form of communication; this is what I have received."

He threw me a typed sheet of paper.

"We shall be glad to know _within the next ten days_ (expiring Saturday) when the Government will guarantee the introduction of a bill to give women the parliamentary vote on the same terms as it is enjoyed by men."

"How are you answering this?" I asked.

"My campaign in the Midlands is all arranged," was the reply, "and will go forward in due course."

"And Sylvia?"

"Anything that can be done will be done. I am offering two thousand pounds reward...."

"Are you making the whole thing public?"

"It's more than half public already. We tried to keep it secret, as you know. To avoid giving them a free advertisement. However, they've advertised themselves by broad hints in the _New Militant_; the gutter-press has taken it up until half England knows and the other half suspects. Rawnsley's seeing the _Times_, and you'll have the whole story in to-morrow's papers. I shall confirm it at Birmingham next week." He paused, and drummed with his fingers on the library table. "I can't answer for the men, but there's not a mother in the length and breadth of the land who won't be on our side when the story comes out."

The ultimate collapse of the whole New Militant campaign has proved his sagacity as a prophet.

"You've got no traces yet of Mavis Rawnsley and the Jefferson boy?" I asked.

"So far the police are completely baffled. They're clever, these women, very clever."

"No clue?"

"Nothing you could take into court. We're not even sure where to look for the perpetrators."