Page:Women Wanted.djvu/32

 to the very curl at the back of my neck. Ah, apparently it is I!

"Now what have you come over here for?" he inquires in a tone of voice that seems to say, "Nobody asked you to England. We're quite too busy about other things to entertain strangers."

I hand him my official journalistic letter addressed "To Whom it may Concern." Signed by the editor of the Pictorial Review, it states that I am delegated to study the new position of women due to the war. Will he want me to? He may be as sensitive as the British consul in New York about the woman movement. He may prefer that it should not move at all.

I hold my breath while he reads the letter. Then I have to talk. I tell him, I think, the complete story of my life. I show him all of my credentials. I give him my photograph. You always have to do that. Photographs that are duplicates of the one on your passport, you must carry by the dozen. You have to leave them like visiting cards with gentlemen in khaki all over Europe.

Well, what is he going to do about me? I get out my letters of social introduction. There are 84! I strew them on the table for him to read. There is a door just behind his head. Will it be in there, the search and the confiscation and the lemon acid bath? I wonder, and I wonder. But I try to stand very still. If I move one foot, it might jar the decision that is forming in the officer's mind. I am watching alertly for his expression. But there