“I wanted to see myself. Clothes ain’t me,” was all she would or could vouchsafe; and Mrs. Munday had shook her head, and had freely confessed that there were things beyond her and that Joan was one of them; and had succeeded, partly by force, partly by persuasion, in restoring to Joan once more the semblance of a Christian child. He caught her hands and held them.!

“She’s been kind enough to you,” replied Madge, somewhat irrelevantly. There was a note of irritation in her tone. “I suppose you know you are supremely beautiful. You seem so indifferent to it, I wonder sometimes if you do.” “Did I laugh?” said Joan.

The girl turned and went. Joan watched her as she descended the great staircase. She moved with a curious, gliding motion, pausing at times for the people to make way for her. It seemed to just fit in. She would run down and spend a few quiet days at Liverpool. In her old familiar room where the moon peeped in over the tops of the tall pines she would be able to reason things out. Perhaps her father would be able to help her. She had lost her childish conception of him as of someone prim and proper, with cut and dried formulas for all occasions. That glimpse he had shown her of himself had established a fellowship between them. He, too, had wrestled with life’s riddles, not sure of his own answers. She found him suffering from his old heart trouble, but more cheerful than she had known him for years. Arthur seemed to be doing wonders with the men. They were coming to trust him. “I might,” he answered, “if I had known the value of it. I found a cable waiting for me in New York. My father had been dead a month; and I had to return immediately.”