“That’s a bad sign,” said the girl. “Means he’s feeling better.” She seated herself on the sofa and fingered the shawl. “Did you give it her?” she asked. “Why not?” she continued, with a flash of defiance, though Madge had not spoken. “It is a weapon like any other—knowledge, intellect, courage. God has given me beauty. I shall use it in His service.”!

Flossie was sceptical. “Why hasn’t it done it before?” she wanted to know. “Good Lord! There’s been enough of it.” He insisted on seeing her as far as the bus. It was a soft, mild night; and they walked round the Circle to Gloucester Gate. He thought there would be more room in the buses at that point.

“I owe to her all the charity and tenderness I know. She taught it to me in those months. I might have learned more if I had let her go on teaching. It was the only way she knew.” Crouching close to the ground, behind the spreading roots of a giant oak, she raised her eyes. Before her lay a sea of smooth, soft mud nearly a mile wide. From the centre rose a solitary tree, from which all had been shot away but two bare branches like outstretched arms above the silence. Beyond, the hills rose again. There was something unearthly in the silence that seemed to brood above that sea of mud. The old priest told her of the living men, French and German, who had stood there day and night sunk in it up to their waists, screaming hour after hour, and waving their arms, sinking into it lower and lower, none able to help them: until at last only their screaming heads were left, and after a time these, too, would disappear: and the silence come again. They remained for a while with their arms round one another. It struck Joan as curious, even at the time, that all feeling of superiority had gone out of her. They might have been two puzzled children that had met one another on a path that neither knew. But Joan was the stronger character.