They had reached the corner. Joan could see her bus in the distance. “No,” said Joan. “I don’t think I’ve got what you call the artistic temperament. I have never felt drawn towards anything of that sort.”!

“She was so much better last week,” he explained. “But it never lasts.” “He’s right,” said a dreamy-eyed looking man, laying down the book he had been reading. “We should have done just the same. ‘My country, right or wrong.’ After all, it is an ideal.”

“Yes,” she answered firmly, as if she were giving a command. But he read pity also in her eyes. In quiet streets of stately houses, she caught glimpses through uncurtained windows of richly-laid dinner-tables about which servants moved noiselessly, arranging flowers and silver. She wondered idly if she would every marry. A gracious hostess, gathering around her brilliant men and women, statesmen, writers, artists, captains of industry: counselling them, even learning from them: encouraging shy genius. Perhaps, in a perfectly harmless way, allowing it the inspiration derivable from a well-regulated devotion to herself. A salon that should be the nucleus of all those forces that influence influences, over which she would rule with sweet and wise authority. The idea appealed to her. It had come to her afterwards craving with its soft brown, troubled eyes for forgiveness. But she had never been able to break it of the habit.