“You will have to imagine yourself my daughter,” she said. “You are taller, but the colouring was the same. You won’t mind, will you?” “Must you, dear?” she said. “Can’t you reconcile it to yourself—to go on with your work of mercy, of saving poor folks’ lives?”!

Joan told her plans. “You’ll be able to get along without me for a little while?” she asked doubtfully. “You will not go as a journalist,” continued Mrs. Denton; “but as a personal friend of mine, whose discretion I shall vouch for. I want you to find out what the people I am sending you among are thinking themselves, and what they consider ought to be done. If we are not very careful on both sides we shall have the newspapers whipping us into war.”

“I’se tooked them off,” explained Joan. A piece of information that really, all things considered, seemed unnecessary. “It isn’t as terrible as you think,” she said. “Many men who have risen and taken a high place in the world were married to kind, good women unable to share their greatness. There was Shakespeare, you know, who married Anne Hathaway and had a clever daughter. She was just a nice, homely body a few years older than himself. And he seems to have been very fond of her; and was always running down to Stratford to be with her.” The landlady entered with Joan’s tea. Joan took an instinctive dislike to her. She was a large, flashy woman, wearing a quantity of cheap jewellery. Her familiarity had about it something almost threatening. Joan waited till she heard the woman’s heavy tread descending the stairs, before she expressed her opinion.