“Are you, too, a Christian?” he asked of Joan. Mr. Simson considered. There came a softer look into his eyes. “How did you do it last time?” he asked. “It came up brown, I remember, with thick gravy.”!

Poor Robert! It would be hard on him, too. She could not help feeling consolation in the thought that he also would be wearing that invisible crown. “It’s war,” he said.

Mr. Simson considered. There came a softer look into his eyes. “How did you do it last time?” he asked. “It came up brown, I remember, with thick gravy.” It was hard not to. She wanted to tell him that he was all wrong—at least, so far as she was concerned. It. was not the conqueror she loved in him; it was the fighter. Not in the hour of triumph but in the hour of despair she would have yearned to put her arms about him. “Unpopularity, abuse, failure,” it was against the fear of such that she would have guarded him. Yes, she had dreamed of leadership, influence, command. But it was the leadership of the valiant few against the hosts of the oppressors that she claimed. Wealth, honours! Would she have given up a life of ease, shut herself off from society, if these had been her standards? “Mésalliance!” Had the male animal no instinct, telling it when it was loved with all a woman’s being, so that any other union would be her degradation. “Tell me,” asked Joan, “am I likely to meet with much of that sort of thing?”