CHAPTER II 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.!

“Because you won’t be there,” he answered, “and without you I can’t do it. You think I’m always like I am to-night, bragging, confident. So I am when you are with me. You give me back my strength. The plans and hopes and dreams that were slipping from me come crowding round me, laughing and holding out their hands. They are like the children. They need two to care for them. I want to talk about them to someone who understands them and loves them, as I do. I want to feel they are dear to someone else, as well as to myself: that I must work for them for her sake, as well as for my own. I want someone to help me to bring them up.” “You’re not angry with me?” he asked. “I haven’t been rude, have I?”

“Tell me,” he said. There was a note of fierce exultation in his voice. “I’ll promise never to speak of it again. If I had been a free man, could I have won you?” “Did I laugh?” said Joan. “No, we don’t,” she said, “not those of us who think. We know we shall never oust man from his place. He will always be the greater. We want to help him; that’s all.”