“I take myself as typical,” she continued. “When I was twenty I could have loved you. You were the type of man I did love.” “Oh, yes, we shall have had enough of it,” agreed Flossie, “by the time we’ve paid up. There’s no doubt of that. What about our children? I’ve just left young Frank strutting all over the house and flourishing a paper knife. And the servants have had to bar the kitchen door to prevent his bursting in every five minutes and attacking them. What’s he going to say when I tell him, later on, that his father and myself have had all the war we want, and have decided there shall be no more? The old folks have had their fun. Why shouldn’t I have mine? That will be his argument.”!

She offered her cheek, and Joan kissed it, somewhat gingerly. Joan seated herself on one of the chairs ranged round the walls, and drew the girl down beside her. Through the closed door, the mingled voices of the Foreign Secretary’s guests sounded curiously like the buzzing of flies.

The cawing of the rooks grew fainter. One by one they folded their wings. “Very beautiful,” he answered, “in the beginning.” “I should make it a bit sooner than that,” suggested the elder woman. “One can’t always stop oneself just where one wants to when sliding down a slope. It has a knack of getting steeper and steeper as one goes on.”