“But I shan’t see him that, even if I do live,” she went on. “He’ll never be that, without you. And I’d be so proud to think that he would. I shouldn’t mind going then,” she added. “I’ve had such a funny letter from Flossie,” said Joan, “begging me almost with tears in her ink to come to her on Sunday evening to meet a ‘gentleman friend’ of hers, as she calls him, and give her my opinion of him. What on earth is she up to?”!

“Oh, she! She’s all right,” agreed the girl. “Having the time of her life: someone to look after for twenty-four hours a day that can’t help themselves.” “Please, Miss, have you got red hair all over you? Or only on your head?”

“I must go now,” she said in a harsh voice, and he released her. “It would not do to tell the truth, or we should have our children growing up to hate war,” she concluded. “I can’t tell,” answered Joan. “I should have meant to. Many men and women have loved, and have meant to help each other all their lives; and with the years have drifted asunder; coming even to be against one another. We change and our thoughts change; slight differences of temperament grow into barriers between us; unguessed antagonisms widen into gulfs. Accidents come into our lives. A friend was telling me the other day of a woman who practically proposed to and married a musical genius, purely and solely to be of use to him. She earned quite a big income, drawing fashions; and her idea was to relieve him of the necessity of doing pot-boilers for a living, so that he might devote his whole time to his real work. And a few weeks after they were married she ran the point of a lead pencil through her eye and it set up inflammation of her brain. And now all the poor fellow has to think of is how to make enough to pay for her keep at a private lunatic asylum. I don’t mean to be flippant. It’s the very absurdity of it all that makes the mystery of life—that renders it so hopeless for us to attempt to find our way through it by our own judgment. It is like the ants making all their clever, laborious plans, knowing nothing of chickens and the gardener’s spade. That is why we have to cling to the life we can order for ourselves—the life within us. Truth, Justice, Pity. They are the strong things, the eternal things, the things we’ve got to sacrifice ourselves for—serve with our bodies and our souls.