Joan started on hearing his name. It was one well known. “That’s the sort that makes me despair of the People,” said Mr. Simson. Joan could not be sure whether he was addressing her individually or imaginary thousands. “Likes working for nothing. Thinks she was born to be everybody’s servant.” He seated himself beside Miss Ensor on the antiquated sofa. It gave a complaining groan but held out.!

One of Joan’s earliest recollections was the picture of herself standing before the high cheval glass in her mother’s dressing-room. Her clothes lay scattered far and wide, falling where she had flung them; not a shred of any kind of covering was left to her. She must have been very small, for she could remember looking up and seeing high above her head the two brass knobs by which the glass was fastened to its frame. Suddenly, out of the upper portion of the glass, there looked a scared red face. It hovered there a moment, and over it in swift succession there passed the expressions, first of petrified amazement, secondly of shocked indignation, and thirdly of righteous wrath. And then it swooped down upon her, and the image in the glass became a confusion of small naked arms and legs mingled with green cotton gloves and purple bonnet strings. Crouching close to the ground, behind the spreading roots of a giant oak, she raised her eyes. Before her lay a sea of smooth, soft mud nearly a mile wide. From the centre rose a solitary tree, from which all had been shot away but two bare branches like outstretched arms above the silence. Beyond, the hills rose again. There was something unearthly in the silence that seemed to brood above that sea of mud. The old priest told her of the living men, French and German, who had stood there day and night sunk in it up to their waists, screaming hour after hour, and waving their arms, sinking into it lower and lower, none able to help them: until at last only their screaming heads were left, and after a time these, too, would disappear: and the silence come again.

“I know, dear,” agreed Flossie, “you’ve both of you made up your minds it shall always remain a beautiful union of twin spirits. Unfortunately you’ve both got bodies—rather attractive bodies.” He came in a little later and, seating himself between them, filled and lighted his pipe. Looking back, Joan remembered that curiously none of them had spoken. Mary had turned at the sound of his key in the door. She seemed to be watching him intently; but it was too dark to notice her expression. He pulled at his pipe till it was well alight and then removed it. One did no good by suppressing one’s nature. In the end it proved too strong. Marriage with Arthur would be only repeating the mistake. To be worshipped, to be served. It would be very pleasant, when one was in the mood. But it would not satisfy her. There was something strong and fierce and primitive in her nature—something that had come down to her through the generations from some harness-girded ancestress—something impelling her instinctively to choose the fighter; to share with him the joy of battle, healing his wounds, giving him of her courage, exulting with him in the victory.