“You don’t think you could, dear,” she whispered, “if I didn’t do anything wicked any more. But just let things take their course.” Joan offered to go in and sit with the invalid. But Mary feared the exertion of talking might be too much for him. “He gets so excited,” she explained. She slipped out noiselessly.!

Even the shopman wavered. Joan pressed her advantage; directed Mrs. Phillips’s attention to something a little less awful. Mrs. Phillips yielded. “I take myself as typical,” she continued. “When I was twenty I could have loved you. You were the type of man I did love.”

“That tells him to talk all that twaddle?” demanded Miss Ensor. “Have you heard him?” “I know, dear,” agreed Flossie, “you’ve both of you made up your minds it shall always remain a beautiful union of twin spirits. Unfortunately you’ve both got bodies—rather attractive bodies.” “Hanged if I can see how we are going to get out of it,” he answered Joan cheerfully. “The moment there is any threat of war, it becomes a point of honour with every nation to do nothing to avoid it. I remember my old duelling days. The quarrel may have been about the silliest trifle imaginable. A single word would have explained the whole thing away. But to utter it would have stamped one as a coward. This Egyptian Tra-la-la! It isn’t worth the bones of a single grenadier, as our friends across the Rhine would say. But I expect, before it’s settled, there will be men’s bones sufficient, bleaching on the desert, to build another Pyramid. It’s so easily started: that’s the devil of it. A mischievous boy can throw a lighted match into a powder magazine, and then it becomes every patriot’s business to see that it isn’t put out. I hate war. It accomplishes nothing, and leaves everything in a greater muddle than it was before. But if the idea ever catches fire, I shall have to do all I can to fan the conflagration. Unless I am prepared to be branded as a poltroon. Every professional soldier is supposed to welcome war. Most of us do: it’s our opportunity. There’s some excuse for us. But these men—Carleton and their lot: I regard them as nothing better than the Ménades of the Commune. They care nothing if the whole of Europe blazes. They cannot personally get harmed whatever happens. It’s fun to them.”