The fanatic turned upon him so fiercely that Mr. Simson’s arm involuntarily assumed the posture of defence. Mrs. Phillips signed amid splutterings and blots. Joan added her signature as witness.!

Her strength was gone and she could only wait. More soldiers had come up and were using their fists freely, and gradually the crowd retired, still snarling; and they lifted him up and brought him to her. She saw the London of the future. Not the vision popular just then: a soaring whirl of machinery in motion, of moving pavements and flying omnibuses; of screaming gramophones and standardized “homes”: a city where Electricity was King and man its soulless slave. But a city of peace, of restful spaces, of leisured men and women; a city of fine streets and pleasant houses, where each could live his own life, learning freedom, individuality; a city of noble schools; of workshops that should be worthy of labour, filled with light and air; smoke and filth driven from the land: science, no longer bound to commercialism, having discovered cleaner forces; a city of gay playgrounds where children should learn laughter; of leafy walks where the creatures of the wood and field should be as welcome guests helping to teach sympathy and kindliness: a city of music, of colour, of gladness. Beauty worshipped as religion; ugliness banished as a sin: no ugly slums, no ugly cruelty, no slatternly women and brutalized men, no ugly, sobbing children; no ugly vice flaunting in every highway its insult to humanity: a city clad in beauty as with a living garment where God should walk with man.

“I have been expecting every morning to find her gone,” said the girl. “I think she only waited to finish this.” She gently unfolded the fine lawn robe, and they saw the delicate insertion and the wonderful, embroidery. “It will do him good,” answered Mrs. Phillips; “getting away from them all for an hour or two. I don’t see much of him myself.” “I can’t,” he answered. “I’m too great a coward.”