“Are they yours?” she asked. She had never connected them with the works, some half a mile away. Though had she been curious, she might have learnt that they were known as “Allway’s Folly.” Phillips’s entrance saved the need of a reply. To the evident surprise of his wife he was in evening clothes.!

“It would not do to tell the truth, or we should have our children growing up to hate war,” she concluded. His work had taken him into the Desert, far from the beaten tracks. He described the life of the people, very little different from what it must have been in Noah’s time. For months he had been the only white man there, and had lived among them. What had struck him was how little he had missed all the paraphernalia of civilization, once he had got over the first shock. He had learnt their sports and games; wrestled and swum and hunted with them. Provided one was a little hungry and tired with toil, a stew of goat’s flesh with sweet cakes and fruits, washed down with wine out of a sheep’s skin, made a feast; and after, there was music and singing and dancing, or the travelling story-teller would gather round him his rapt audience. Paris had only robbed women of their grace and dignity. He preferred the young girls in their costume of the fourteenth dynasty. Progress, he thought, had tended only to complicate life and render it less enjoyable. All the essentials of happiness—love, courtship, marriage, the home, children, friendship, social intercourse, and play, were independent of it; had always been there for the asking.

“I think she could,” answered Joan, “if she would pull herself together. It’s her lack of will-power that’s the trouble.” “We’ll keep it off that plane, if you don’t mind,” answered Joan with a touch of severity. There was a little humorous smile about his mouth. But his eyes were serious and pleading.