“So did Archimedes disappear,” he answered with a smile. “The nameless Roman soldier remained. That was hardly the survival of the fittest.” Joan promised, and the child went out. She looked pretty when she smiled. She closed the door behind her noiselessly.!

Joan laughed. “I’m a drummer boy,” she answered. “I beat my drum each week in a Sunday newspaper, hoping the lads will follow.” “You will let me make one for you, dearie, won’t you?” she said. “I feel sure it will be a little Christ baby.”

Likely enough that there were good-for-nothing, cockered menials imposing upon incompetent mistresses. There were pampered slaves in Rome. But these others. These poor little helpless sluts. There were thousands such in every city, over-worked and under-fed, living lonely, pleasureless lives. They must be taught to speak in other voices than the dulcet tones of peeresses. By the light of the guttering candles, from their chill attics, they should write to her their ill-spelt visions. She hurried onward with bent head, trying to escape them. She felt so small, so helpless. Almost she cried out in her despair. But even that did not help her. It seemed in some mysterious way to be no longer her room, but the room of someone she had known and half forgotten: who would never come back. It gave her the same feeling she had experienced on returning to the house in London: that the place was haunted. The high cheval glass from her mother’s dressing-room had been brought there for her use. The picture of an absurdly small child—the child to whom this room had once belonged—standing before it naked, rose before her eyes. She had wanted to see herself. She had thought that only her clothes stood in the way. If we could but see ourselves, as in some magic mirror? All the garments usage and education has dressed us up in laid aside. What was she underneath her artificial niceties, her prim moralities, her laboriously acquired restraints, her unconscious pretences and hypocrisies? She changed her clothes for a loose robe, and putting out the light drew back the curtains. The moon peeped in over the top of the tall pines, but it only stared at her, indifferent. It seemed to be looking for somebody else.