Joan could not say. So much depended upon the general state of health. There was the case of her own father. Of course she would always be subject to attacks. But this one would have warned her to be careful. “I’m just running round to the doctor’s,” she whispered. “His medicine hasn’t come. I shan’t be long.”!

She did not want to talk about the war. “Oh, you know,” explained Flossie. “Like a volcano compressed into a steam engine.”

“Not always forgotten,” answered Mrs. Denton; “mislaid, it may be, for the moment. An Indian student, the son of an old Rajah, called on me a little while ago. He was going back to organize a system of education among his people. ‘My father heard you speak when you were over in India,’ he told me. ‘He has always been thinking about it.’ Thirty years ago it must have been, that I undertook that mission to India. I had always looked back upon it as one of my many failures.” Her conscience plagued her when she thought of Mrs. Denton. For some time now, they had been very close together; and the old lady had come to depend upon her. She waited till all doubt was ended before calling to say good-bye. Mrs. Denton was seated before an old bureau that had long stood locked in a corner of the library. The drawers were open and books and papers were scattered about. “Ask Phillips to come and see me,” he said. “I can be of more help, if I know exactly his views.”