Mary seemed troubled. Evidently, as Miss Ensor had stated, advice was not her line. “Perhaps he’s got to do it, dearie,” she suggested. “Not yet,” admitted Joan. “May have to, later on.”!

His work had taken him into the Desert, far from the beaten tracks. He described the life of the people, very little different from what it must have been in Noah’s time. For months he had been the only white man there, and had lived among them. What had struck him was how little he had missed all the paraphernalia of civilization, once he had got over the first shock. He had learnt their sports and games; wrestled and swum and hunted with them. Provided one was a little hungry and tired with toil, a stew of goat’s flesh with sweet cakes and fruits, washed down with wine out of a sheep’s skin, made a feast; and after, there was music and singing and dancing, or the travelling story-teller would gather round him his rapt audience. Paris had only robbed women of their grace and dignity. He preferred the young girls in their costume of the fourteenth dynasty. Progress, he thought, had tended only to complicate life and render it less enjoyable. All the essentials of happiness—love, courtship, marriage, the home, children, friendship, social intercourse, and play, were independent of it; had always been there for the asking. “We tried to pretend it was only one of Jack’s little jokes,” explained Greyson as he folded up the cutting; “but it wouldn’t work. It was too near the truth.”

The child was watching her. “I’m glad you persuaded him,” she said. She thought it ended. But yet she sat there motionless. “I must go now,” she said in a harsh voice, and he released her.