“But I like cooking, you know, dearie,” grumbled Mary. “There’s no interest in warming things up.” “What on earth induced Helen to bring that poor old Dutch doll along with her?” demanded Flossie. “The woman never opened her mouth all the time. Did she tell you?”!

“You mean my friendship is going to be of no use to you?” asked Joan. “Yes,” she answered, “’E’s got on. I always think of that little poem, ‘Lord Burleigh,’” she continued; “whenever I get worrying about myself. Ever read it?”

It was hard not to. She wanted to tell him that he was all wrong—at least, so far as she was concerned. It. was not the conqueror she loved in him; it was the fighter. Not in the hour of triumph but in the hour of despair she would have yearned to put her arms about him. “Unpopularity, abuse, failure,” it was against the fear of such that she would have guarded him. Yes, she had dreamed of leadership, influence, command. But it was the leadership of the valiant few against the hosts of the oppressors that she claimed. Wealth, honours! Would she have given up a life of ease, shut herself off from society, if these had been her standards? “Mésalliance!” Had the male animal no instinct, telling it when it was loved with all a woman’s being, so that any other union would be her degradation. Joan dropped a note into Phillips’s letter-box on her return home, saying briefly that she wished to see him; and he sent up answer asking her if she would come to the gallery that evening, and meet him after his speech, which would be immediately following the dinner hour. He gave a short laugh. “A trick,” he said, “to weaken me. They think to shave my locks; show me to the people bound by their red tape. To put it another way, a rat among the terriers.”