“You’re not playing the game,” whispered Joan, shaking her head. “I only promised on condition that you would try to get well.” “What’s he like in himself?” he asked her. “You’ve been seeing something of him, haven’t you?”!

“You’ll do,” he answered with a laugh. “With nine men out of ten that speech would have ended your chances. You sized me up at a glance, and knew it would only interest me. And your instinct is right,” he added. “What people are saying: always go straight for that.” In his letter to Joan he went further. He had received his uncle’s letter, so he confided to her. Perhaps she would think him a crank, but he couldn’t help it. He hated this killing business, this making of machinery for slaughtering men in bulk, like they killed pigs in Chicago. Out on the free, sweet sea, helping to keep it clean from man’s abominations, he would be away from it all.

Mary argued that England could and should keep out of it; but Greyson was convinced it would be impossible, not to say dishonourable: a sentiment that won the enthusiastic approval of the little drummer in Joan’s brain. He played “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the King,” the “Marseillaise” and the Russian National hymn, all at the same time. He would have included “Deutschland über Alles,” if Joan hadn’t made a supreme effort and stopped him. Evidently a sporting little devil. He took himself off into a corner after a time, where he played quietly to himself; and Joan was able to join in the conversation. Folk had fixed up a party at his studio to meet her. She had been there once or twice; but this was a final affair. She had finished her business in Paris and would be leaving the next morning. To her surprise, she found Phillips there. He had come over hurriedly to attend a Socialist conference, and Leblanc, the editor of Le Nouveau Monde, had brought him along. 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?