Joan had met Mrs. Phillips several times; and once, on the stairs, had stopped and spoken to her; but had never been introduced to her formally till now. “What are you making?” asked Joan.!

“I want to prove to myself,” she explained, “that I am capable of earning my own living. I am going down into the market-place. If I’m no good, if I can’t take care of even one poor woman, I’ll come back and ask you to keep me.” She was sitting on the arm of his chair, and laughing, she drew his head towards her and pressed it against her. “If I succeed, if I am strong enough to fight the world for myself and win, that will mean I am strong enough and clever enough to help others.” Her strength was gone and she could only wait. More soldiers had come up and were using their fists freely, and gradually the crowd retired, still snarling; and they lifted him up and brought him to her.

“His sufferings!” he interrupted. “Does suffering entitle a man to be regarded as divine? If so, so also am I a God. Look at me!” He stretched out his long, thin arms with their claw-like hands, thrusting forward his great savage head that the bony, wizened throat seemed hardly strong enough to bear. “Wealth, honour, happiness: I had them once. I had wife, children and a home. Now I creep an outcast, keeping to the shadows, and the children in the street throw stones at me. Thirty years I have starved that I might preach. They shut me in their prisons, they hound me into garrets. They jibe at me and mock me, but they cannot silence me. What of my life? Am I divine?” Madge was of opinion that the world would have had enough of war. Not armies but whole peoples would be involved this time. The lesson would be driven home. “She’s the most beautiful body in all the world,” he said. “Though merely seeing her you mightn’t know it.”