“Oh, just a Christian gentleman,” she answered. “You will love him when you know him.” She ran to him and, seizing his listless arms, put them round her.!

She had gone down to Liverpool, intending to persuade her father to leave the control of the works to Arthur, and to come and live with her in London; but had left without broaching the subject. There were nights when she would trapse the streets till she would almost fall exhausted, rather than face the solitude awaiting her in her own rooms. But so also there were moods when, like some stricken animal, her instinct was to shun all living things. At such times his presence, for all his loving patience, would have been as a knife in her wound. Besides, he would always be there, when escape from herself for a while became an absolute necessity. More and more she had come to regard him as her comforter. Not from anything he ever said or did. Rather, it seemed to her, because that with him she felt no need of words. There were tears in his eyes. He brushed them angrily away. “Oh, I know I ought to be ashamed of myself,” he said. “It wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t to know that a hot-blooded young chap of twenty hasn’t all his wits about him, any more than I was. If I had never met you, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d have done my bit of good, and have stopped there, content. With you beside me”—he looked away from her to where the silent city peeped through its veil of night—“I might have left the world better than I found it.”

And then, as fate would have it, the first lesson happened to be the story of Jonah and the whale. Half a dozen shocked faces turned suddenly towards her told Joan that at some point in the thrilling history she must unconsciously have laughed. Fortunately she was alone in the pew, and feeling herself scarlet, squeezed herself into its farthest corner and drew down her veil. “You’ll do,” he answered with a laugh. “With nine men out of ten that speech would have ended your chances. You sized me up at a glance, and knew it would only interest me. And your instinct is right,” he added. “What people are saying: always go straight for that.” “I took one or two prizes myself,” said Mrs. Phillips. “But, of course, one forgets things. I was wondering if you would mind if I ran up occasionally to ask you a question. Of course, as you know, my ’usband ’as ’ad so few advantages”—the lady’s mind was concerned with more important matters, and the aspirates, on this occasion, got themselves neglected—“It is wonderful what he ’as done without them. But if, now and then, I could ’elp him—”