“An odd reason for enlisting,” thought Joan. Joan was making herself a cup of tea when there came a tap at the door. It was Mrs. Phillips.!

He did not ask her how she had learnt it. “She gave it up when we were married,” he said. “The people she would have to live among would have looked askance at her if they had known. There seemed no reason why they should.” Mary flushed. She seemed to want to get back to her cooking. “It’s something inside us, dearie,” she thought: “that nobody hears but ourselves.”

The firelight showed to Joan a comically frightened face, with round, staring eyes and an open mouth. But the sinner, confessing his fault, is entitled to forgiveness, and, having put him back into his proper place, she let him kiss her hand. She even went further and let him ask her out to dinner. As the result of her failure to reform Mrs. Phillips she was feeling dissatisfied with herself. It was an unpleasant sensation and somewhat new to her experience. An evening spent in Arthur’s company might do her good. The experiment proved successful. He really was quite a dear boy. Eyeing him thoughtfully through the smoke of her cigarette, it occurred to her how like he was to Guido’s painting of St. Sebastian; those soft, dreamy eyes and that beautiful, almost feminine, face! There always had been a suspicion of the saint about him even as a boy: nothing one could lay hold of: just that odd suggestion of a shadow intervening between him and the world. Mr. Halliday, who had been supporting the weight of his body upon his right leg, transferred the burden to his left.