He turned to her as the man went. “Try and forgive me,” he said in a low voice. “It all came tumbling out before I thought what I was saying.” “And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.”!

Joan stopped. “Why, it’s the house you are always talking about,” she said. “Are you thinking of taking it?” After a time, the care of the convalescents passed almost entirely into Joan’s hands, Madame Lelanne being told off to assist her. By dint of much persistence she had succeeded in getting the leaky roof repaired, and in place of the smoky stove that had long been her despair she had one night procured a fine calorifère by the simple process of stealing it. Madame Lelanne had heard about it from the gossips. It had been brought to a lonely house at the end of the village by a major of engineers. He had returned to the trenches the day before, and the place for the time being was empty. The thieves were never discovered. The sentry was positive that no one had passed him but two women, one of them carrying a baby. Madame Lelanne had dressed it up in a child’s cloak and hood, and had carried it in her arms. As it must have weighed nearly a couple of hundred-weight suspicion had not attached to them.

“I was going to buy you a present,” he grumbled. “But you wouldn’t let me get up.” “You have got to consider the cost of refusal,” she said. “His offer wasn’t help or neutrality: it was help or opposition by every means in his power. He left me in no kind of doubt as to that. He’s not used to being challenged and he won’t be squeamish. You will have the whole of his Press against you, and every other journalistic and political influence that he possesses. He’s getting a hold upon the working classes. The Sunday Post has an enormous sale in the manufacturing towns; and he’s talking of starting another. Are you strong enough to fight him?” “He might win through,” mused Greyson. “He’s the man to do it, if anybody could. But the odds will be against him.”