“Yes,” she answered firmly, as if she were giving a command. But he read pity also in her eyes. It surprised her when one evening after dinner he introduced it himself.!

“Do you remember that day, my dear,” she said, “when we went furnishing together. And I would have all the wrong things. And you let me.” “It’s such a lovely evening,” he said. “Couldn’t we go somewhere and dine under a tree?”

The stars came out before they had ended dinner. She had made him talk about himself. It was marvellous what he had accomplished with his opportunities. Ten hours a day in the mines had earned for him his living, and the night had given him his leisure. An attic, lighted by a tallow candle, with a shelf of books that left him hardly enough for bread, had been his Alma Mater. History was his chief study. There was hardly an authority Joan could think of with which he was not familiar. Julius Caesar was his favourite play. He seemed to know it by heart. At twenty-three he had been elected a delegate, and had entered Parliament at twenty-eight. It had been a life of hardship, of privation, of constant strain; but she found herself unable to pity him. It was a tale of strength, of struggle, of victory, that he told her. He laughed. “And this new journal of his?” he asked. “It’s got to be published in London, hasn’t it?” “I’m so afraid,” she answered gravely. “That I shall come to love you too much: the home, the children and you. I shall have none left over.”