“If you’re going the whole hog, that’s something I can understand,” continued Flossie. “If not, you’d better pull up.” “I may,” answered Joan. “Just to spank it, and put it down again. I’m rather a believer in temptation—the struggle for existence. I only want to make it a finer existence, more worth the struggle, in which the best man shall rise to the top. Your ‘universal security’—that will be the last act of the human drama, the cue for ringing down the curtain.”!

“Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things. “He wants you,” said the child. “It’s your being there that helps him.”

Mrs. Denton had died. She had left Joan her library, together with her wonderful collection of note books. She had brought them all up-to-date and indexed them. They would be invaluable to Francis when he started the new paper upon which they had determined. He was still in the hospital at Breganze, near to where his machine had been shot down. She had tried to get to him; but it would have meant endless delays; and she had been anxious about her father. The Italian surgeons were very proud of him, he wrote. They had had him X-rayed before and after; and beyond a slight lameness which gave him, he thought, a touch of distinction, there was no flaw that the most careful scrutiny would be likely to detect. Any day, now, he expected to be discharged. Mary had married an old sweetheart. She had grown restless in the country with nothing to do, and, at the suggestion of some friends, had gone to Bristol to help in a children’s hospital; and there they had met once more. Flossie had joined every society she could hear of that was working for the League of Nations. Her hope was that it would get itself established before young Frank grew up. “That’s the idea,” answered Flossie; “a heart to heart talk between you and me, and nobody else. Half-past four. Don’t forget.”