It was earlier than the time she had fixed in her own mind and, pausing with her elbows resting on the granite parapet, she watched the ceaseless waters returning to the sea, bearing their burden of impurities. He met Joan, radiant, a morning or two later. The English Government had resigned and preparations for a general election were already on foot.!

Flossie appeared, towing a white-haired, distinguished-looking man, a Mr. Folk. She introduced him and immediately disappeared. Joan wished she had been left alone a little longer. She would like to have heard more. Especially was she curious concerning Abner, the lady’s third. Would the higher moral law compel him, likewise, to leave the poor lady saddled with another couple of children? Or would she, on this occasion, get in—or rather, get off, first? Her own fancy was to back Abner. She did catch just one sentence before Miss Tolley, having obtained more food for reflection than perhaps she wanted, signalled to her secretary that the note-book might be closed. “One can never be sure of a woman,” he answered. “And it would have been so difficult. There was a girl down in Scotland, one of the village girls. It wasn’t anything really. We had just been children together. But they all thought I had gone away to make my fortune so as to come back and marry her—even my mother. It would have looked so mean if after getting on I had married a fine London lady. I could never have gone home again.”

“Very beautiful,” he answered, “in the beginning.” Shaking hands with her, she had turned eastward, intending to walk to Sloane Square and there take the bus. At the corner of Oakley Street she overtook him. He was evidently a stranger to the neighbourhood, and was peering up through his glasses to see the name of the street; and Joan caught sight of his face beneath a gas lamp. “You’ll soon get used to it,” Joan told her. “The great thing is not to be afraid of one’s fate, whatever it is; but just to do one’s best.” It was rather like talking to a child.