Years afterwards, listening to the overture to Tannhäuser, there came back to her the memory of that night. Ever through the mad Satanic discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims’ onward march. So through the jangled discords of the world one heard the Song of Life. Through the dim aeons of man’s savage infancy; through the centuries of bloodshed and of horror; through the dark ages of tyranny and superstition; through wrong, through cruelty, through hate; heedless of doom, heedless of death, still the nightingale’s song: “I love you. I love you. I love you. We will build a nest. We will rear our brood. I love you. I love you. Life shall not die.” They remained for a while with their arms round one another. It struck Joan as curious, even at the time, that all feeling of superiority had gone out of her. They might have been two puzzled children that had met one another on a path that neither knew. But Joan was the stronger character.!

“Try and find me brainy,” he whispered to her, as soon as Flossie was out of earshot. “Talk to me about China. I’m quite intelligent on China.” “No,” answered Joan. “I’m a Lancashire lass.”

She seized at the chance of changing the subject. “I should let him,” advised Madge. She grew thoughtful again. “We cranky young women, with our new-fangled, independent ways, I guess we hurt the old folks quite enough as it is.” “I want to talk to them,” he said, “about their stomachs. I want them to see the need of concentrating upon the food problem: insisting that it shall be solved. The other things can follow.”