CHAPTER VII.
THE PRICE OF POWER.
After the great and epoch-making meeting in Queen's Hall, the disturbed state of public feeling was accentuated. It was generally felt that the s*x-conflict which the revolt of woman had brought about now was shaping towards some new and startling climax. A crisis was at hand. Moreover, at the same time, the appearance and rapid development of a serious and unfamiliar epidemic created widespread alarm.
At first people had laughed at the "new disease," but the laughter was shortlived—like great numbers of those whom the epidemic attacked. Harley Street described it professionally as a recrudescence of plica polonica; and just as at an earlier period people had contracted influenza into "the flue," they now went about asking each other how about the "plic.
