“You left a glove behind you, the first day you ever came to our house,” Mary explained. “And I kept it.” He rose and took the letter from where he had placed it on the mantelpiece. He stooped and held it out above the fire and a little flame leaped up and seemed to take it from his hand.!

She very much wanted to look at him, but she would not. It seemed to her quite a time before he replied. “She deserves the Croix de Guerre, if it is proved that she did it,” he thought. “She will have saved many thousands of lives—for the present.”

But the dyed hair and the paint put up a fight for themselves. In the end she would go into Parliament. It would be bound to come soon, the woman’s vote. And after that the opening of all doors would follow. She would wear her college robes. It would be far more fitting than a succession of flimsy frocks that would have no meaning in them. What pity it was that the art of dressing—its relation to life—was not better understood. What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and serviceable for these hateful slop-shop clothes that made them look like walking scarecrows. Why had the coming of Democracy coincided seemingly with the spread of ugliness: dull towns, mean streets, paper-strewn parks, corrugated iron roofs, Christian chapels that would be an insult to a heathen idol; hideous factories (Why need they be hideous!); chimney-pot hats, baggy trousers, vulgar advertisements, stupid fashions for women that spoilt every line of their figure: dinginess, drabness, monotony everywhere. It was ugliness that was strangling the soul of the people; stealing from them all dignity, all self-respect, all honour for one another; robbing them of hope, of reverence, of joy in life. Joan was troubled. She was rather looking forward to occasional restaurant dinners, where she would be able to study London’s Bohemia.