Mr. Halliday, who had been supporting the weight of his body upon his right leg, transferred the burden to his left. “No,” she answered with a smile. “But it will hurt me if you fail. Remember that.”!

She did not see him again that night. They met in the morning at breakfast. A curious strangeness to each other seemed to have grown up between them, as if they had known one another long ago, and had half forgotten. When they had finished she rose to leave; but he asked her to stop, and, after the table had been cleared, he walked up and down the room, while she sat sideways on the window seat from where she could watch the little ships moving to and fro across the horizon, like painted figures in a show. Joan remembered Folk, the artist she had met at Flossie’s party, who had promised to walk with her on the terrace at St. Germain, and tell her more about her mother. She looked up his address on her return home, and wrote to him, giving him the name of the hotel in the Rue de Grenelle where Mrs. Denton had arranged that she should stay. She found a note from him awaiting her when she arrived there. He thought she would like to be quiet after her journey. He would call round in the morning. He had presumed on the privilege of age to send her some lilies. They had been her mother’s favourite flower. “Monsieur Folk, the great artist,” had brought them himself, and placed them in her dressing-room, so Madame informed her.

“There wasn’t much difference, so far as I could see, between them and most of us,” answered the little old lady. “You’re not married, dear,” she continued, glancing at Joan’s ungloved hand, “but people must have a deal of patience when they have to live with us for twenty-four hours a day. You see, little things we do and say without thinking, and little ways we have that we do not notice ourselves, may all the time be irritating to other people.” “No, not His last,” said Joan: “‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’ Love was Christ’s God. He will help us to find Him.” “No, dear,” answered Mary. “It’s only one or two who have nowhere else to go.”