Joan stopped and turned. “Did he send you?” she asked. “I heard you come in,” she said. “You’re not busy, are you?”!

She looked up Phillips at the House, and gave him Greyson’s message. He had just returned from Folkestone, and was worried. “And mind your p’s and q’s,” she added. “You’re in a difficult position. And not all the eyes watching you are friendly.”

Her admiration of the independent woman had undergone some modification since she had come in contact with her. Woman was intended to be dependent upon man. It was the part appointed to him in the social scheme. Woman had hers, no less important. Earning her own living did not improve her. It was one of the drawbacks of civilization that so many had to do it of necessity. It developed her on the wrong lines—against her nature. This cry of the unsexed: that woman must always be the paid servant instead of the helper of man—paid for being mother, paid for being wife! Why not carry it to its logical conclusion, and insist that she should be paid for her embraces? That she should share in man’s labour, in his hopes, that was the true comradeship. What mattered it, who held the purse-strings! “Very beautiful,” he answered, “in the beginning.” “Oh, just enough to be of no use,” Mary answered. “Carleton was rather decent, so far as that part of it was concerned, and insisted on paying him a fair price. The market value would have been much less; and he wanted to be out of it.”