The years that followed—till, like some shipwrecked swimmer to whom returning light reveals the land, she felt new life and hopes come back to her—always remained in her memory vague, confused; a jumble of events, thoughts, feelings, without sequence or connection. “I must go now,” she said in a harsh voice, and he released her.!

Joan made a swift effort to hide her surprise. She had never heard of her mother having been upon the stage. “We are next floor neighbours,” he said. “My name’s Phillips.”

“Good man,” said Mrs. Denton. “I’m quite serious. You tell him from me that the next revolution has got to be against the Press. And it will be the stiffest fight Democracy has ever had.” Madge still held to her hope. God would make a wind of reason to pass over the earth. He would not smite again his people. There was a famous preacher. He lived the simple life in a small house in Battersea, and consecrated all his energies to the service of the poor. Almost, by his unselfish zeal, he had persuaded Joan of the usefulness of the church. Mr. Airlie frequently visited him. They interested one another. What struck Mr. Airlie most was the self-sacrificing devotion with which the reverend gentleman’s wife and family surrounded him. It was beautiful to see. The calls upon his moderate purse, necessitated by his wide-spread and much paragraphed activities, left but a narrow margin for domestic expenses: with the result that often the only fire in the house blazed brightly in the study where Mr. Airlie and the reverend gentleman sat talking: while mother and children warmed themselves with sense of duty in the cheerless kitchen. And often, as Mr. Airlie, who was of an inquiring turn of mind, had convinced himself, the only evening meal that resources would permit was the satisfying supper for one brought by the youngest daughter to her father where he sat alone in the small dining-room.