“Are you never coming again?” asked the child. Facing the mirror of the days to come, she tried it on. It was going to hurt. There was no doubt of that. She saw the fatuous, approving face of the eternal Mrs. Phillips, thrust ever between them, against the background of that hideous furniture, of those bilious wall papers—the loneliness that would ever walk with her, sit down beside her in the crowded restaurant, steal up the staircase with her, creep step by step with her from room to room—the ever unsatisfied yearning for a tender word, a kindly touch. Yes, it was going to hurt.!

She threw herself into the suffrage movement. It satisfied her for a while. She had the rare gift of public speaking, and enjoyed her triumphs. She was temperate, reasonable; persuasive rather than aggressive; feeling her audience as she went, never losing touch with them. She had the magnetism that comes of sympathy. Medical students who came intending to tell her to go home and mind the baby, remained to wonder if man really was the undoubted sovereign of the world, born to look upon woman as his willing subject; to wonder whether under some unwritten whispered law it might not be the other way about. Perhaps she had the right—with or without the baby—to move about the kingdom, express her wishes for its care and management. Possibly his doubts may not have been brought about solely by the force and logic of her arguments. Possibly the voice of Nature is not altogether out of place in discussions upon Humanity’s affairs. “Don’t think me unsympathetic,” she said. “No one will rejoice more than I shall if God sees fit to call you to good work. But I can’t help letting fall my little tear of fellowship with the weeping.”

“I’ll tell you who makes all the wars,” he said. “It’s you and me, my dears: we make the wars. We love them. That’s why we open our mouths and swallow all the twaddle that the papers give us; and cheer the fine, black-coated gentlemen when they tell us it’s our sacred duty to kill Germans, or Italians, or Russians, or anybody else. We are just crazy to kill something: it doesn’t matter what. If it’s to be Germans, we shout ‘A Berlin!’; and if it’s to be Russians we cheer for Liberty. I was in Paris at the time of the Fashoda trouble. How we hissed the English in the cafés! And how they glared back at us! They were just as eager to kill us. Who makes a dog fight? Why, the dog. Anybody can do it. Who could make us fight each other, if we didn’t want to? Not all the king’s horses and all the King’s men. No, my dears, it’s we make the wars. You and me, my dears.” They were at the far end of the corridor; and the few others still promenading were some distance away. She had not delivered the whole of her message. She crossed to a seat, and he followed her. She spoke with her face turned away from him. They spoke in whispers, and Joan at first had made an effort to disguise her voice. But her conductor had smiled. “They shall be called the brothers and the sisters of the Lord,” he had said. “Mademoiselle is brave for her Brothers’ sake.” He was a priest. There were many priests among the stretcher-bearers.