“I expect that was it,” Joan confessed. “It interferes with our reason at times.” “You grow wonderfully like your mother,” he told her that evening at dinner. “There used to be something missing. But I don’t feel that, now.”!

“Couldn’t you have saved a bit, Daddy?” she asked, “of all that wealth of youth—just enough to live on?” The firelight showed to Joan a comically frightened face, with round, staring eyes and an open mouth.

“It need not do that,” he answered. “It would be beautiful to be with you always so that I might serve you. But I am quite happy, loving you. Let me see you now and then: touch you and hear your voice.” Greyson spoke with an enthusiasm that was unusual to him. So many of our wars had been mean wars—wars for the wrong; sordid wars for territory, for gold mines; wars against the weak at the bidding of our traders, our financiers. “Shouldering the white man’s burden,” we called it. Wars for the right of selling opium; wars to perpetuate the vile rule of the Turk because it happened to serve our commercial interests. This time, we were out to play the knight; to save the smaller peoples; to rescue our once “sweet enemy,” fair France. Russia was the disturbing thought. It somewhat discounted the knight-errant idea, riding stirrup to stirrup beside that barbarian horseman. But there were possibilities about Russia. Idealism lay hid within that sleeping brain. It would be a holy war for the Kingdom of the Peoples. With Germany freed from the monster of blood and iron that was crushing out her soul, with Russia awakened to life, we would build the United States of Europe. Even his voice was changed. Joan could almost fancy it was some excited schoolboy that was talking. “The old story,” sighed Mr. Simson. “One of the customers happened to be passing last Wednesday when I was speaking on the Embankment. Heard my opinion of the middle classes?”