“But you still loved her, didn’t you, Dad?” she asked. “I was very little at the time, but I can just remember. You seemed so happy together. Till her illness came.” “She won’t be expecting you, just yet,” she explained. “We might have a little walk.”!

He was looking at her with those shy, worshipping eyes of his that always made her marvel at her own wonderfulness. “It will give you greater freedom,” he had suggested with fine assumption of propounding a mere business proposition; “enabling you to choose your work entirely for its own sake. I have always wanted to take a hand in helping things on. It will come to just the same, your doing it for me.”

A very little while ago, Mr. Airlie, in his capacity of second cousin to one of the ladies concerned, a charming girl but impulsive, had been called upon to attend a family council of a painful nature. The gentleman’s name took Joan’s breath away: it was the name of one of her heroes, an eminent writer: one might almost say prophet. She had hitherto read his books with grateful reverence. They pictured for her the world made perfect; and explained to her just precisely how it was to be accomplished. But, as far as his own particular corner of it was concerned, he seemed to have made a sad mess of it. Human nature of quite an old-fashioned pattern had crept in and spoilt all his own theories. “Yes,” said Joan. “Not any great number of them, not yet. But enough to show that I really am interesting them. It grows every week.” “Yes,” she answered. “And I’m glad that I did it,” she added, defiantly.