“Why didn’t we all kiss and be friends after the Napoleonic wars?” she demanded, “instead of getting up Peterloo massacres, and anti-Corn Law riots, and breaking the Duke of Wellington’s windows?” She hoped he had not seen them. What a little fool she was.!

“No,” admitted Mr. Simson with generosity. “It’s only natural. It’s a fight to the finish between me and the Bourgeois. I cover them with ridicule and contempt and they hit back at me in the only way they know.” Joan wished she had not mentioned Shakespeare. There had surely been others; men who had climbed up and carried their impossible wives with them. But she couldn’t think of one, just then.

God was conquering. Unceasing through the ages, God’s voice had crept round man, seeking entry. Through the long darkness of that dim beginning, when man knew no law but self, unceasing God had striven: until at last one here and there, emerging from the brute, had heard—had listened to the voice of love and pity, and in that hour, unknowing, had built to God a temple in the wilderness. One evening it struck him that the milk-pail, standing just inside the window, had been tampered with. Next day he marked with a scratch the inside of the pan and, returning later, found the level of the milk had sunk half an inch. So he hid himself and waited; and at twilight the next day the window was stealthily pushed open, and two small, terror-haunted eyes peered round the room. They satisfied themselves that no one was about and a tiny hand clutching a cracked jug was thrust swiftly in and dipped into the pan; and the window softly closed. She stooped and kissed the child, straining her to her almost fiercely. But the child’s lips were cold. She did not look back.