Joan did not meet Hilda again till the child had grown into a woman—practically speaking. She had always been years older than her age. It was at a reception given in the Foreign Office. Joan’s dress had been trodden on and torn. She had struggled out of the crowd into an empty room, and was examining the damage somewhat ruefully, when she heard a voice behind her, proffering help. It was a hard, cold voice, that yet sounded familiar, and she turned. Mr. McKean shook her hand vigorously without looking at her.!

Phillips came down looking more cheerful. He had detected improvement in Mrs. Phillips. She was more hopeful in herself. They talked in low tones during the meal, as people do whose thoughts are elsewhere. It happened quite suddenly, Phillips explained. They had come down a few days after the rising of Parliament. There had been a spell of hot weather; but nothing remarkable. The first attack had occurred about three weeks ago. It was just after Hilda had gone back to school. He wasn’t sure whether he ought to send for Hilda, or not. Her mother didn’t want him to—not just yet. Of course, if she got worse, he would have to. What did Joan think?—did she think there was any real danger? “His sufferings!” he interrupted. “Does suffering entitle a man to be regarded as divine? If so, so also am I a God. Look at me!” He stretched out his long, thin arms with their claw-like hands, thrusting forward his great savage head that the bony, wizened throat seemed hardly strong enough to bear. “Wealth, honour, happiness: I had them once. I had wife, children and a home. Now I creep an outcast, keeping to the shadows, and the children in the street throw stones at me. Thirty years I have starved that I might preach. They shut me in their prisons, they hound me into garrets. They jibe at me and mock me, but they cannot silence me. What of my life? Am I divine?”

“She’s the most beautiful body in all the world,” he said. “Though merely seeing her you mightn’t know it.” They gathered round the table. Mr. Baptiste was still pinned up in Mary’s bright shawl. It lent him a curious dignity. He might have been some ancient prophet stepped from the pages of the Talmud. Miss Ensor completed her supper with a cup of tea and some little cakes: “just to keep us all company,” as Mary had insisted. There came a day in early spring. All night long the guns had never ceased. It sounded like the tireless barking of ten thousand giant dogs. Behind the hills, the whole horizon, like a fiery circle, was ringed with flashing light. Shapeless forms, bent beneath burdens, passed in endless procession through the village. Masses of rushing men swept like shadowy phantoms through the fitfully-illumined darkness. Beneath that everlasting barking, Joan would hear, now the piercing wail of a child; now a clap of thunder that for the moment would drown all other sounds, followed by a faint, low, rumbling crash, like the shooting of coals into a cellar. The wounded on their beds lay with wide-open, terrified eyes, moving feverishly from side to side.