I
AT FIVE o’clock of a September evening, Helen Sholto left the office, as usual, and went to her club. Opposite the tube lift in Dover Street, London, out of which she came, was a bookstall. Clamoring across the front, a newsbill at once caught the eye of an informed modern woman:
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BRITAIN AND AMERICA |
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AMAZING SPEECH BY |
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JOHN ENDOR, M.P. |
She bought a copy of the Evening Press. Looking it quickly through, she found in the column for late news a blurred, hastily-inserted paragraph
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THE ANGLO-AMERICAN |
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Speaking to-day at Blackhampton Town |
Helen gasped. The words were like icy water thrown in the face. And the sensation of having had all the breath taken out of her body was increased by the knowledge that a second purchaser of the Evening Press, a rough-looking workman, standing by her elbow, had given a savage exclamation. Moreover, in the act of so doing, by that process of telepathy beyond whose threshold Science has yet to peer, he caught the distracted eyes of the particularly attractive-looking girl who was folding up her own copy of the paper.
“Does for him, I reckon!” And the man spat savagely.
Helen turned abruptly away, and walked slowly along Dover Street. A thousand imps were loose in her brain. Space, quiet, solitude were needed in which to quell them, to bring them under control. Almost it was as if the bottom had fallen out of the world in which she lived.