Joan slipped her hand through the other’s arm. They both laughed. “He’s a good lad,” said her father.!

“But what’s the difference,” demanded Joan, “between a man owning one paper with a circulation of, say, six millions; or owning six with a circulation of a million apiece? By concentrating all his energies on one, a man with Carleton’s organizing genius might easily establish a single journal that would cover the whole field.” The old lady had tired herself. Joan undertook the mission. She thought she would rather enjoy it, and Mrs. Denton promised to let her have full instructions. She would write to her friends in Paris and prepare them for Joan’s coming.

“There is an old Hindoo proverb,” he said: “That when a man and woman love they dig a fountain down to God.” “Don’t drag me back,” she whispered. “It’s all finished.” She raised herself up and put her arms about Joan’s neck. “It was hard at first, and I hated you. And then it came to me that this was what I had been wanting to do, all my life—something to help him, that nobody else could do. Don’t take it from me.” In the end she would go into Parliament. It would be bound to come soon, the woman’s vote. And after that the opening of all doors would follow. She would wear her college robes. It would be far more fitting than a succession of flimsy frocks that would have no meaning in them. What pity it was that the art of dressing—its relation to life—was not better understood. What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and serviceable for these hateful slop-shop clothes that made them look like walking scarecrows. Why had the coming of Democracy coincided seemingly with the spread of ugliness: dull towns, mean streets, paper-strewn parks, corrugated iron roofs, Christian chapels that would be an insult to a heathen idol; hideous factories (Why need they be hideous!); chimney-pot hats, baggy trousers, vulgar advertisements, stupid fashions for women that spoilt every line of their figure: dinginess, drabness, monotony everywhere. It was ugliness that was strangling the soul of the people; stealing from them all dignity, all self-respect, all honour for one another; robbing them of hope, of reverence, of joy in life.