Mary’s hand gave Joan’s a little squeeze. “You won’t mind if anybody drops in?” she said. “They do sometimes of a Sunday evening.” “Oh, don’t you believe her,” she advised Mr. Halliday. “She loves you still. She’s only teasing you. This is Joan.”!

“I think God must want you very badly,” she said, “or He wouldn’t have laid so heavy a cross upon you. You will come?” The little drummer in her brain would creep out of his corner, play to her softly while she moved about among them.

“But you haven’t married her—or have you?” asked Joan. It was only the intellectual part of him she wanted—the spirit, not the man. She would be taking nothing away from the woman, nothing that had ever belonged to her. All the rest of him: his home life, the benefits that would come to her from his improved means, from his social position: all that the woman had ever known or cared for in him would still be hers. He would still remain to her the kind husband and father. What more was the woman capable of understanding? What more had she any right to demand? “Do let me come with you,” he said. “I kept myself free this evening, hoping. And I’m feeling so lonesome.”