Mrs. Denton laughed. “I haven’t much more to do,” she answered. “Just tidying up, as you see; and two or three half-finished things I shall try to complete. After that, I’ll perhaps take a rest.” She went up to her room. There really was not much to do. She could quite well finish her packing in the morning. She sat down at the desk and set to work to arrange her papers. It was a warm spring evening, and the window was open. A crowd of noisy sparrows seemed to be delighted about something. From somewhere, unseen, a blackbird was singing. She read over her report for Mrs. Denton. The blackbird seemed never to have heard of war. He sang as if the whole world were a garden of languor and love. Joan looked at her watch. The first gong would sound in a few minutes. She pictured the dreary, silent dining-room with its few scattered occupants, and her heart sank at the prospect. To her relief came remembrance of a cheerful but entirely respectable restaurant near to the Louvre to which she had been taken a few nights before. She had noticed quite a number of women dining there alone. She closed her dispatch case with a snap and gave a glance at herself in the great mirror. The blackbird was still singing.!

“But why leave it to his son,” argued Joan. “Why couldn’t the old man have set about it himself, instead of wasting thirty precious years?” “You are a wicked God,” Joan told Him. “Yes, You are. A cruel, wicked God.”

She moved to a chair beside the desk, and, opening her bag, took out a writing-block. The nurse was standing by the window. She turned sharply on Joan’s entrance. Joan slipped the box into her hands. She forced him gently back into his chair, and seated herself upon the floor between his knees. “What were you thinking of when I came in?” she asked. “You weren’t asleep, were you?”