“I felt a bit afraid of her,” laughed Joan, “so I made her promise not to part with it. Is he really very ill, her husband?” “I wonder how many of my ideals will be left to me,” sighed Joan. “I always used to regard the Press as the modern pulpit.”!

“Don’t drag me back,” she whispered. “It’s all finished.” She raised herself up and put her arms about Joan’s neck. “It was hard at first, and I hated you. And then it came to me that this was what I had been wanting to do, all my life—something to help him, that nobody else could do. Don’t take it from me.” Joan replaced the letter in its envelope, and laid it down upon the desk. Unconsciously a smile played about her lips.

“I think God must want you very badly,” she said, “or He wouldn’t have laid so heavy a cross upon you. You will come?” Into the picture, slightly to the background, she unconsciously placed Greyson. His tall, thin figure with its air of distinction seemed to fit in; Greyson would be very restful. She could see his handsome, ascetic face flush with pleasure as, after the guests were gone, she would lean over the back of his chair and caress for a moment his dark, soft hair tinged here and there with grey. He would always adore her, in that distant, undemonstrative way of his that would never be tiresome or exacting. They would have children. But not too many. That would make the house noisy and distract her from her work. They would be beautiful and clever; unless all the laws of heredity were to be set aside for her especial injury. She would train them, shape them to be the heirs of her labour, bearing her message to the generations that should follow. “I took Smedley’s place at the last moment,” he whispered to her. “I’ve never been abroad before. You don’t mind, do you?”