“I will stay with her for a little while,” she said. “Till I feel there is no more need. Then I must get back to work.” And suddenly it came to her that it was a face she knew. In the dim-lit church she had not seen him clearly. He was still peering upward. Joan stole another glance. Yes, she had met him somewhere. He was very changed, quite different, but she was sure of it. It was a long time ago. She must have been quite a child.!

“It is part of it, dear, isn’t it?” insisted Mary Stopperton. “To suffer for one’s faith. I think Jesus must have liked him for that.” She would build again the Forum. The people’s business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class domestic problems should be solved not solely by fine gentlemen from Oxford; the wife of the little clerk should be allowed her say. War or peace, it should no longer be regarded as a question concerning only the aged rich. The common people—the cannon fodder, the men who would die, and the women who would weep: they should be given something more than the privilege of either cheering platform patriots or being summoned for interrupting public meetings.

“It only came an hour or two ago,” her father explained. “If he wrote to you by the same post, you may have left before it arrived.” It made her mad, the look of delight that came into his eyes. She could have boxed his ears. Hadn’t he anything else to do but hang about the streets. Joan hoped she was exaggerating. “I must try and select a table where there is some good-natured girl to keep me in countenance,” she said with a smile.