“You don’t mean a party?” asked Joan. They had reached the end of the street again. Joan held out her hand with a laugh.!

“The combination sometimes happens, by chance,” admitted Greyson. “But it’s dangerous to seek it. It is so easy to persuade ourselves that it’s our duty to succeed.” She would not let him light the gas. “I have dined—in the train,” she explained. “Let us talk by the firelight.”

It was at Madge Singleton’s rooms that the details of Joan’s entry into journalistic London were arranged. “The Coming of Beauty,” was Flora Lessing’s phrase for designating the event. Flora Lessing, known among her associates as “Flossie,” was the girl who at Cambridge had accidentally stumbled upon the explanation of Joan’s influence. In appearance she was of the Fluffy Ruffles type, with childish innocent eyes, and the “unruly curls” beloved of the Family Herald novelist. At the first, these latter had been the result of a habit of late rising and consequent hurried toilet operations; but on the discovery that for the purposes of her profession they possessed a market value they had been sedulously cultivated. Editors of the old order had ridiculed the idea of her being of any use to them, when two years previously she had, by combination of cheek and patience, forced herself into their sanctum; had patted her paternally upon her generally ungloved hand, and told her to go back home and get some honest, worthy young man to love and cherish her. “I should keep out of it if I were you,” laughed Joan. “It will do him good,” answered Mrs. Phillips; “getting away from them all for an hour or two. I don’t see much of him myself.”