They returned home by train. Joan insisted on travelling third class, and selected a compartment containing a stout woman and two children. Arthur had to be at the works. An important contract had got behindhand and they were working overtime. She and her father dined alone. He made her fulfil her promise to talk about herself, and she told him all she thought would interest him. She passed lightly over her acquaintanceship with Phillips. He would regard it as highly undesirable, she told herself, and it would trouble him. He was reading her articles in the Sunday Post, as also her Letters from Clorinda: and of the two preferred the latter as being less subversive of law and order. Also he did not like seeing her photograph each week, displayed across two columns with her name beneath in one inch type. He supposed he was old-fashioned. She was getting rather tired of it herself. The words made no immediate impression upon Joan. There had been rumours, threatenings and alarms, newspaper talk. But so there had been before. It would come one day: the world war that one felt was gathering in the air; that would burst like a second deluge on the nations. But it would not be in our time: it was too big. A way out would be found.!

“And suppose she repeats her mother’s experience,” suggested Joan. The restaurant had been steadily emptying. Monsieur Gustav and his ample-bosomed wife were seated at a distant table, eating their own dinner.

She patted Joan’s hand and spoke gravely. “That is right, dear. That is youth’s métier; to take the banner from our failing hands, bear it still a little onward.” Her small gloved hand closed on Joan’s with a pressure that made Joan wince. “What are you doing now?” asked Joan, in a low tone. “You’ll look after him if anything does happen, won’t you?” The woman’s eyes were pleading with her. They seemed to have grown larger. “You know what I mean, dear, don’t you?” she continued. “It will be such a comfort to me to know that it’s all right.”