“I’m afraid I’m an awful nuisance to you,” he said. “I get these moods at times. You’re not angry with me?” “Some men,” he answered. “Artists and poets. They have the woman within them. Men like myself—the mere fighter: we are incomplete in ourselves. Male and female created He them. We are lost without our mate.”!

He seemed relieved. “That’s what’s so wonderful about you,” he said. “I’ve met plenty of clever, brilliant women, but one could forget that they were women. You’re everything.” “If he gain his end, what do the means matter?” he continued, as Joan did not answer. “Food may be dearer; the unions can square that by putting up wages; while the poor devil of a farm labourer will at last get fair treatment. We can easily insist upon that. What do you think, yourself?”

“I’m so afraid,” she answered gravely. “That I shall come to love you too much: the home, the children and you. I shall have none left over.” “She loved you very dearly,” he said. “Better than herself. All those years of sorrow: they came to her because of that. I thought it foolish of her at the time, but now I know she was wise. I want you always to love and honour her. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t right.” The question troubled her. It struck her with a pang of self-reproach that she had always been indifferent to her mother’s illness, regarding it as more or less imaginary. “It was mental rather than physical, I think,” she answered. “I never knew what brought it about.”