“It only came an hour or two ago,” her father explained. “If he wrote to you by the same post, you may have left before it arrived.” Joan answered with a faint smile. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I didn’t forget that argument in case it hadn’t occurred to the Lord.”!

“It always seemed to me immoral, the marriage ceremony,” the Human Document was explaining. She was a thin, sallow woman, with an untidy head and restless eyes that seemed to be always seeking something to look at and never finding it. “How can we pledge the future? To bind oneself to live with a man when perhaps we have ceased to care for him; it’s hideous.” He turned and leant over his desk. “I guess they’ll have to find another leader if they’re in a hurry,” he added. “I don’t seem able to think about turnips and cows.”

“No,” answered Joan. “But my mother was. Are you?” Joan bore the germ of worry in her breast as she crossed the Gray’s Inn Garden. It was a hard law, that of the world: knowing only winners and losers. Of course, the woman was to be pitied. No one could feel more sorry for her than Joan herself. But what had Madge exactly meant by those words: that she could “see her doing something really big,” if she thought it would help him? There was no doubt about her affection for him. It was almost dog-like. And the child, also! There must be something quite exceptional about him to have won the devotion of two such opposite beings. Especially Hilda. It would be hard to imagine any lengths to which Hilda’s blind idolatry would not lead her. They looked at one another, and then beyond the sheltering evergreens and the wide lawns to where the great square house seemed to be listening.