“What’s he like to-night?” she asked, with a jerk of her head in the direction of the next room. She placed her bag carefully upon the sofa, and examined the new shawl as she did so. One of the women on her list, and the one to whom Mrs. Denton appeared to attach chief importance, a Madame de Barante, disappointed Joan. She seemed to have so few opinions of her own. She had buried her young husband during the Franco-Prussian war. He had been a soldier. And she had remained unmarried. She was still beautiful.!

“How do you mean ‘in his way’?” demanded Joan. It certainly, if Froude was to be trusted, could not have been the orthodox way. There was a little humorous smile about his mouth. But his eyes were serious and pleading.

“It’s you women that make war,” he continued. “Oh, I don’t mean that you do it on purpose, but it’s in your blood. It comes from the days when to live it was needful to kill. When a man who was swift and strong to kill was the only thing that could save a woman and her brood. Every other man that crept towards them through the grass was an enemy, and her only hope was that her man might kill him, while she watched and waited. And later came the tribe; and instead of the one man creeping through the grass, the everlasting warfare was against all other tribes. So you loved only the men ever ready and willing to fight, lest you and your children should be carried into slavery: then it was the only way. You brought up your boys to be fighters. You told them stories of their gallant sires. You sang to them the songs of battle: the glory of killing and of conquering. You have never unlearnt the lesson. Man has learnt comradeship—would have travelled further but for you. But woman is still primitive. She would still have her man the hater and the killer. To the woman the world has never changed.” He seemed relieved. “That’s what’s so wonderful about you,” he said. “I’ve met plenty of clever, brilliant women, but one could forget that they were women. You’re everything.” “You think it would prove a useful alliance?” she suggested.