“I want to know,” she said. She could still see him: the boyish smile. And his voice that had sent her tears back again as if at the word of command.!

There came a fierce anger into the dark eyes. “Why did you listen to it?” she demanded. “All would have been easy if you hadn’t.” But the old fanatic’s vigour had not yet exhausted itself.

“It was a foolish notion,” she said, “that of the Manchester school: that men and women could be treated as mere figures in a sum.” They discussed politics in the train. Phillips had found more support for his crusade against Carleton than he had expected. He was going to open the attack at once, thus forestalling Carleton’s opposition to his land scheme. Joan expressed her thanks. She would like to have had more talk with the stern old lady, but was prevented by the entrance of two new comers. The first was Miss Lavery, a handsome, loud-toned young woman. She ran a nursing paper, but her chief interest was in the woman’s suffrage question, just then coming rapidly to the front. She had heard Joan speak at Cambridge and was eager to secure her adherence, being wishful to surround herself with a group of young and good-looking women who should take the movement out of the hands of the “frumps,” as she termed them. Her doubt was whether Joan would prove sufficiently tractable. She intended to offer her remunerative work upon the Nursing News without saying anything about the real motive behind, trusting to gratitude to make her task the easier.