“Because I don’t want the Devil to get hold of him,” answered Greyson. He struck a match and held it for her. Joan sat with her elbows on the table and smoked in silence. She was thinking.!

“Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things. She remembered, as she was taking her leave, what she had come for: which was to invite Joan to dinner on the following Friday.

It was not of herself she was thinking. It was for his work’s sake that she wanted to be near to him always: that she might counsel him, encourage him. For this she was prepared to sacrifice herself, give up her woman’s claim on life. They would be friends, comrades—nothing more. That little lurking curiosity of hers, concerning what it would be like to feel his strong arms round her, pressing her closer and closer to him: it was only a foolish fancy. She could easily laugh that out of herself. Only bad women had need to be afraid of themselves. She would keep guard for both of them. Their purity of motive, their high purpose, would save them from the danger of anything vulgar or ridiculous. The speaker sat a little way apart. The light from the oil lamp, suspended from the ceiling, fell upon his face. He wore a peasant’s blouse. It seemed to her a face she knew. Possibly she had passed him in the village street and had looked at him without remembering. It was his eyes that for long years afterwards still haunted her. She did not notice at the time what language he was speaking. But there were none who did not understand him. “And having learned that respectable journalism has no use for brains, you come to me,” he answered her. “What do you think you can do?”