He was reading a letter. “You were dining there on Friday night, weren’t you?” he asked her, without looking up. He had been staring through her rather than at her, so it had seemed to Joan. Suddenly their eyes met, and he broke into a smile.!

She felt the time had come to speak seriously. “I want you to marry,” she said, “and be happy. I shall be troubled if you don’t.” “Yes,” she answered. “And I’m glad that I did it,” she added, defiantly.

“I don’t suppose it does: not directly,” answered Mrs. Denton. “But it helps them to establish their position and get a tighter hold upon the public. War does pay the newspaper in the long run. The daily newspaper lives on commotion, crime, lawlessness in general. If people no longer enjoyed reading about violence and bloodshed half their occupation, and that the most profitable half would be gone. It is the interest of the newspaper to keep alive the savage in human nature; and war affords the readiest means of doing this. You can’t do much to increase the number of gruesome murders and loathsome assaults, beyond giving all possible advertisement to them when they do occur. But you can preach war, and cover yourself with glory, as a patriot, at the same time.” “I wonder if you’re right,” mused Mrs. Phillips. “He does often say that he’d just as soon I didn’t talk about them.” “No, it wasn’t,” answered the child. “Most of them were against it. And then there was Mama,” she added in a lower tone.