“Nothing better could have happened,” she was of opinion. “It means that their hearts are in it.” They looked at one another, and then beyond the sheltering evergreens and the wide lawns to where the great square house seemed to be listening.!

She took from among the litter a faded photograph and handed it to Joan. “Odd,” she said. “I’ve just turned it out.” Miss Ensor turned to her. “Oh, you talk to him,” she urged. “Here, he’s lost his job again, and is losing his girl: all because of his silly politics. Tell him he’s got to have sense and stop it.”

“She was so much better last week,” he explained. “But it never lasts.” And then during college vacations, returning home with growing notions and views of her own, she had found herself so often in antagonism with him. His fierce puritanism, so opposed to all her enthusiasms. Arguing with him, she might almost have been listening to one of his Cromwellian ancestors risen from the dead. There had been disputes between him and his work-people, and Joan had taken the side of the men. He had not been angry with her, but coldly contemptuous. And yet, in spite of it all, if he had only made a sign! She wanted to fling herself crying into his arms and shake him—make him listen to her wisdom, sitting on his knee with her hands clasped round his neck. He was not really intolerant and stupid. That had been proved by his letting her go to a Church of England school. Her mother had expressed no wish. It was he who had selected it. “She’s the most beautiful body in all the world,” he said. “Though merely seeing her you mightn’t know it.”