“Well, you can’t expect ’em to like it, can you?” submitted Miss Ensor. He met Joan, radiant, a morning or two later. The English Government had resigned and preparations for a general election were already on foot.!

“I can’t if I’m ill,” retorted Joan. “Besides, I am helping him. There are other ways of helping people than by wasting their time talking to them.” And then there flashed remembrance of her mother. She, too, had laid aside herself; had thought that love and duty could teach one to be other than one was. The Ego was the all important thing, entrusted to us as the talents of silver to the faithful servant: to be developed, not for our own purposes, but for the service of the Master.

She must write to him. The sooner it was done, the better. Half a dozen contradictory moods passed over her during the composing of that letter; but to her they seemed but the unfolding of a single thought. On one page it might have been his mother writing to him; an experienced, sagacious lady; quite aware, in spite of her affection for him, of his faults and weaknesses; solicitous that he should avoid the dangers of an embarrassing entanglement; his happiness being the only consideration of importance. On others it might have been a queen laying her immutable commands upon some loyal subject, sworn to her service. Part of it might have been written by a laughing philosopher who had learnt the folly of taking life too seriously, knowing that all things pass: that the tears of to-day will be remembered with a smile. And a part of it was the unconsidered language of a loving woman. And those were the pages that he kissed. “But the people are more powerful now,” argued Joan. “If the farmer demanded higher prices, they could demand higher wages.” “I’m sure I am,” she said. “Make home-coming a change to him. As you said yourself the other evening. It’s good for him to get away from it all, now and then.”