“It was clever of him to make use of you,” he said. “If he’d sent it through anybody else, I’d have published it.” Joan could not say. So much depended upon the general state of health. There was the case of her own father. Of course she would always be subject to attacks. But this one would have warned her to be careful.!

“I didn’t ask you if you liked him,” he explained to her. “I asked you if he was brainy. I’m not too sure that you like brainy men.” “Oh, it isn’t that,” he answered. “But she’s frightened. You know. Says life with me is going to be a bit too uncertain for her. Perhaps she’s right.”

“What does Madge think of him?” asked Joan. And she had promised him. He needed her. The words she had spoken to Madge, not dreaming then of their swift application. They came back to her. “God has called me. He girded His sword upon me.” What right had she to leave it rusting in its scabbard, turning aside from the pathway pointed out to her because of one weak, useless life, crouching in her way. It was not as if she were being asked to do evil herself that good might come. The decision had been taken out of her hands. All she had to do was to remain quiescent, not interfering, awaiting her orders. Her business was with her own part, not with another’s. To be willing to sacrifice oneself: that was at the root of all service. Sometimes it was one’s own duty, sometimes that of another. Must one never go forward because another steps out of one’s way, voluntarily? Besides, she might have been mistaken. That picture, ever before her, of the woman pausing with the brush above her tongue—that little stilled gasp! It may have been but a phantasm, born of her own fevered imagination. She clung to that, desperately. “All roads lead to Calvary.” It was curious how the words had dwelt with her, till gradually they had become a part of her creed. She remembered how at first they had seemed to her a threat chilling her with fear. They had grown to be a promise, a hope held out to all. The road to Calvary! It was the road to life. By the giving up of self we gained God.