He saw her “home”; and went on up the stairs to his own floor. Joan shot a glance from over her cup. The poor puzzled face was staring into the fire. Joan could almost hear him saying it.!

“And you don’t forget our compact, do you?” he continued, “that I am to be your backer. I want to be in it too.” She saw the London of the future. Not the vision popular just then: a soaring whirl of machinery in motion, of moving pavements and flying omnibuses; of screaming gramophones and standardized “homes”: a city where Electricity was King and man its soulless slave. But a city of peace, of restful spaces, of leisured men and women; a city of fine streets and pleasant houses, where each could live his own life, learning freedom, individuality; a city of noble schools; of workshops that should be worthy of labour, filled with light and air; smoke and filth driven from the land: science, no longer bound to commercialism, having discovered cleaner forces; a city of gay playgrounds where children should learn laughter; of leafy walks where the creatures of the wood and field should be as welcome guests helping to teach sympathy and kindliness: a city of music, of colour, of gladness. Beauty worshipped as religion; ugliness banished as a sin: no ugly slums, no ugly cruelty, no slatternly women and brutalized men, no ugly, sobbing children; no ugly vice flaunting in every highway its insult to humanity: a city clad in beauty as with a living garment where God should walk with man.

He laughed. “I told you I’d be all right if you started me on China,” he said. “Oh, a little,” she answered. “He’s absolutely sincere; and he means business. He won’t stop at the bottom of the ladder now he’s once got his foot upon it.” Joan laughed. She thought she would be a fit candidate.