They were as still as mice, and the rumble of traffic along Piccadilly sounded very loud. Miss Conron was as white as a sheet, and her eyes were staring as if she were scared to death. Bill took a long breath and went on--
"I've tried to see your point of view while I've been among you, and I can't. I'm going to leave you and get back to my own lot. I'm giving up something I didn't think I could give up, but I won't join you just to get it. There are not so many of us as there are of you, but you'll do what you're told if we take charge. Most of us have seen dead men, and some of us have seen dead women. None of you have seen either, and you don't understand. You want to hide things away and pretend they're not there. They _are_ there, and they are going on wherever the Germans are, you fools. There's a man here who has been impertinent to me because he thinks I'm a fool. I'm a better man than any six of his sort, and I'm going to show him how. It will do the rest of you good to watch, because you haven't seen death yet, and a man with a bruise or two will seem a big thing to you. Come along, my sofa-king, you're for it."
Bill walked up to him with his hands down and the women began to squeal. The draper-man was game. He took a step forward and swung his right. Bill hooked him under the chin and gave him the left in the stomach. The poor beggar backed off, taking a wicked upper-cut as he did so. As he straightened again Bill sent a couple of full swings to his head. He was going down, but Bill wouldn't let him. I think if he hadn't been so clever with Miss Conron on the sofa he would have got off fairly cheap, but a girl makes a lot of difference to any scrap. He took about six more before he hit the deck, and then he looked like a Belgian atrocity picture by Raemaekers. Bill came over to me and signalled his sister to the door. She moved off. My oath, she hadn't turned a hair--she's a sportsman. He looked across at Miss Conron, who was still on the sofa looking at the huddled figure in the middle of the carpet. "I'm going now, Hilda," he said; "your people aren't my people. I'm sorry."
She never moved, but the colour had come back into her face again. Bill shrugged back his shoulders and turned his back, and we started for the door. Miss Dane was there, holding the handle and looking past us at the horrified group we had left. As we got almost up to her she smiled and came to Bill. She took him by the shoulders and turned him round, and I turned to see what she was looking at. Miss Conron was walking that sixty-foot plank after us, and I knew when I saw her face that she and Bill were going to be all right. She didn't say anything, and the four of us went out, and Bill kissed her in the hall in front of the servants. Trouble? No--not much. You see, Bill had had a scalp wound, and they put it all down to that. The draper-man didn't want to publish things much, and Miss Conron's father has got a bit of a pull. If he had no kick coming other people could shut up, and--oh yes! Sound as a bell--he wouldn't have got married otherwise. But, by gum, his sister was right--wasn't she?