Once, someone who must have known the place and had descended the steps softly, sat there among them and talked with them. Joan could not remember seeing him enter. Perhaps unknowing, she had fallen to sleep for a few minutes. Madame Lelanne was seated by the stove, her great coarse hands upon her knees, her patient, dull, slow-moving eyes fixed upon the speaker’s face. Dubos was half standing, half resting against the table, his arms folded upon his breast. The wounded men had raised themselves upon the straw and were listening. Some leant upon their elbows, some sat with their hands clasped round their knees, and one, with head bent down, remained with his face hidden in his hands. 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.!

“I’m not indifferent to it,” answered Joan. “I’m reckoning on it to help me.” The Human Document looked offended. “You do not think I would have permitted any power on earth to separate them from me, do you?” she answered. “I said to him, ‘They are mine, mine. Where I go, they go. Where I stay, they stay.’ He saw the justice of my argument.”

“I was afraid you had forgotten how to do it,” she laughed, when at last he released her. “Do you know, you haven’t hugged me, Dad, since I was five years old. That’s nineteen years ago. You do love me, don’t you?” “But there’s truth in a good deal that she says,” he added. “War can bring out all that is best in a people; but also it brings out the worst. We shall have to take care that the ideals are not lost sight of.” Mary put the indigestible-looking pasties into the oven, and almost banged the door. Miss Ensor proceeded to lay the table. “How many, do you think?” she asked. Mary was doubtful. She hoped that, it being Christmas Day, they would have somewhere better to go.