He raised his eyes and fixed them on her with a pleading, dog-like look. She had just the head mistress expression. Joan wasn’t quite sure she oughtn’t to stand. But, controlling the instinct, leant back in her chair, and tried to look defiant without feeling it.!

“Do you know, I shouldn’t worry about them, if I were you,” Joan advised her. “Let him forget them when he’s with you. A man can have too much of a good thing,” she laughed. Joan was pouring out the tea. “Oh, nothing,” she answered, “but just be agreeable to the right people. He’ll tell you who they are. And take care of him.”

He sank back a huddled heap upon the chair. There was foam about his mouth, great beads of sweat upon his forehead. Mary wiped them away with a corner of her apron, and felt again his trembling hands. “Oh, please don’t talk to him any more,” she pleaded, “not till he’s had his supper.” She fetched her fine shawl, and pinned it round him. His eyes followed her as she hovered about him. For the first time, since he had entered the room, they looked human. It consoled him, later, that he was not the only victim. The Daily Dispatch became famous for its piquant interviews; especially with elderly celebrities of the masculine gender. And as he talked and dreamed there grew up in her heart a fierce anger. What would her own future be? She would marry probably some man of her own class, settle down to the average woman’s “life”; be allowed, like a spoilt child, to still “take an interest” in public affairs: hold “drawing-rooms” attended by cranks and political nonentities: be President, perhaps, of the local Woman’s Liberal League. The alternative: to spend her days glued to a desk, penning exhortations to the people that Carleton and his like might or might not allow them to read; while youth and beauty slipped away from her, leaving her one of the ten thousand other lonely, faded women, forcing themselves unwelcome into men’s jobs. There came to her a sense of having been robbed of what was hers by primitive eternal law. Greyson had been right. She did love power—power to serve and shape the world. She would have earned it and used it well. She could have helped him, inspired him. They would have worked together: he the force and she the guidance. She would have supplied the things he lacked. It was to her he came for counsel, as it was. But for her he would never have taken the first step. What right had this poor brainless lump of painted flesh to share his wounds, his triumphs? What help could she give him when the time should come that he should need it?