There was a distinct challenge in Flossie’s eye as she asked the question. Joan felt herself flush, and thought a moment. “Perhaps God cannot help there being weak things,” answered Joan. “Perhaps He, too, is sorry for them.”!

“I know, dear,” agreed Flossie, “you’ve both of you made up your minds it shall always remain a beautiful union of twin spirits. Unfortunately you’ve both got bodies—rather attractive bodies.” He met her in the corridor, and they walked up and down and talked, too absorbed to be aware of the curious eyes that were turned upon them. Joan gave him Carleton’s message.

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. There were tears in his eyes. He brushed them angrily away. “Oh, I know I ought to be ashamed of myself,” he said. “It wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t to know that a hot-blooded young chap of twenty hasn’t all his wits about him, any more than I was. If I had never met you, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d have done my bit of good, and have stopped there, content. With you beside me”—he looked away from her to where the silent city peeped through its veil of night—“I might have left the world better than I found it.” “Better not go on, nurse,” said one of them. “It’s some poor devil of a Conchy, I expect. Must have a damned sight more pluck than I should.”