“That tells him to talk all that twaddle?” demanded Miss Ensor. “Have you heard him?” The nurse raised the lid. “What a fool I’ve been,” she said. “I never thought of that.”!

“I don’t know what made me think of you,” she said. “I’m so glad I did.” She gave the little old lady a hug. Mary laughed. “Where are you going now, dearie?” she asked. “Nature appears to have only one idea in her head,” she continued after a pause, “so far as we men and women are concerned. She’s been kinder to the lower animals.”

There were tears in his eyes. He brushed them angrily away. “Oh, I know I ought to be ashamed of myself,” he said. “It wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t to know that a hot-blooded young chap of twenty hasn’t all his wits about him, any more than I was. If I had never met you, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d have done my bit of good, and have stopped there, content. With you beside me”—he looked away from her to where the silent city peeped through its veil of night—“I might have left the world better than I found it.” “But they’re frightened of me,” he added, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, “and I don’t seem to know how to tackle them.” Joan tried to enthuse; but the words came haltingly. She suggested to Joan a candle that some wind had suddenly blown out. The paint and powder had been obvious, but at least it had given her the mask of youth. She looked old and withered. The life seemed to have gone out of her.