“I’m not good at getting on with people,” she explained. “I was going to buy you a present,” he grumbled. “But you wouldn’t let me get up.”!

“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.” “It doesn’t matter, dearie,” she explained. “They know, if they find it open, that I’m in.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, they are always eager enough for it, at first,” he answered. “There is the excitement. The curiosity. You must remember that life is a monotonous affair to the great mass of the people. There’s the natural craving to escape from it; to court adventure. They are not so enthusiastic about it after they have tasted it. Modern warfare, they soon find, is about as dull a business as science ever invented.” It was the first time he had risen since his appointment, and he was received with general cheers. He stood out curiously youthful against the background of grey-haired and bald-headed men behind him; and there was youth also in his clear, ringing voice that not even the vault-like atmosphere of that shadowless chamber could altogether rob of its vitality. He spoke simply and good-humouredly, without any attempt at rhetoric, relying chiefly upon a crescendo of telling facts that gradually, as he proceeded, roused the House to that tense stillness that comes to it when it begins to think. Joan looked up. There was something in the eyes looking down upon her that seemed to be compelling her.