Joan remained silent. It made her mad, that a man could be suddenly robbed of fifteen years’ labour: the weapon that his heart and brain had made keen wrested from his hand by a legal process, and turned against the very principles for which all his life he had been fighting. Joan stopped. “Why, it’s the house you are always talking about,” she said. “Are you thinking of taking it?”!

Madge had asked Joan to come a little earlier so that they could have a chat together before the others arrived. It was from a small operating hospital in a village of the Argonne that she first saw the war with her own eyes.

She stood erect, looking down at him while seeming to be absorbed in the rearrangement of her hair, feeling a little ashamed of herself. She was “encouraging” him. There was no other word for it. She seemed to have developed a sudden penchant for this sort of thing. It would end in his proposing to her; and then she would have to tell him that she cared for him only in a cousinly sort of way—whatever that might mean—and that she could never marry him. She dared not ask herself why. She must manoeuvre to put it off as long as possible; and meanwhile some opening might occur to enlighten him. She would talk to him about her work; and explain to him how she had determined to devote her life to it to the exclusion of all other distractions. If, then, he chose to go on loving her—or if he couldn’t help it—that would not be her fault. After all, it did him no harm. She could always be gracious and kind to him. It was not as if she had tricked him. He had always loved her. Kneeling before her, serving her: it was evident it made him supremely happy. It would be cruel of her to end it. “But I’m so useless,” pleaded the woman. “I think that’s why I love it,” she said: “for it’s dear, old-fashioned ways. We will teach it the new dreams, too. It will be so shocked, at first.”