“They know that,” chimed in the man lying next to him; “or they would not drug us. Why, when we stormed La Haye I knew nothing until an ugly-looking German spat a pint of blood into my face and woke me up.” She had always found it difficult to know when to take him seriously and when not.!

“The business of the journalist,” the man had continued, “is to destroy the truth, to lie, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, to sell his soul for his daily bread. We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks. They pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, our lives are the property of other men.” “I shouldn’t have recognized you,” laughed Joan. “What was the occasion?”

Miss Ensor turned to her. “Oh, you talk to him,” she urged. “Here, he’s lost his job again, and is losing his girl: all because of his silly politics. Tell him he’s got to have sense and stop it.” 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. “Yes, but when Phillips does speak, he speaks to the whole country,” retorted Joan.