“We’ll keep it off that plane, if you don’t mind,” answered Joan with a touch of severity. “I’m afraid you haven’t yet grasped the power of the Press,” he answered with a smile. “Phillips speaks occasionally to five thousand people. Carleton addresses every day a circle of five million readers.”!

His work had taken him into the Desert, far from the beaten tracks. He described the life of the people, very little different from what it must have been in Noah’s time. For months he had been the only white man there, and had lived among them. What had struck him was how little he had missed all the paraphernalia of civilization, once he had got over the first shock. He had learnt their sports and games; wrestled and swum and hunted with them. Provided one was a little hungry and tired with toil, a stew of goat’s flesh with sweet cakes and fruits, washed down with wine out of a sheep’s skin, made a feast; and after, there was music and singing and dancing, or the travelling story-teller would gather round him his rapt audience. Paris had only robbed women of their grace and dignity. He preferred the young girls in their costume of the fourteenth dynasty. Progress, he thought, had tended only to complicate life and render it less enjoyable. All the essentials of happiness—love, courtship, marriage, the home, children, friendship, social intercourse, and play, were independent of it; had always been there for the asking. “Why didn’t we all kiss and be friends after the Napoleonic wars?” she demanded, “instead of getting up Peterloo massacres, and anti-Corn Law riots, and breaking the Duke of Wellington’s windows?”

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.” “But wasn’t that the Lord’s idea,” he said; “when He gave Eve to Adam to be his helpmeet?” “Thank you,” she said, “for being so kind—and wise. I shall always love and honour her.”