Joan flushed. What did he mean by cross-examining her in this way? She was not at all used to impertinence from the opposite sex. The train drew in, and he found her a corner seat, and stood talking by the window, about common things.!

“I wish you would always be yourself, as you are now,” she said, “and never pose.” “It sounds like Meredith,” suggested Joan. “I am not quite sure.”

She very much wanted to look at him, but she would not. It seemed to her quite a time before he replied. CHAPTER XIII Mrs. Denton had died. She had left Joan her library, together with her wonderful collection of note books. She had brought them all up-to-date and indexed them. They would be invaluable to Francis when he started the new paper upon which they had determined. He was still in the hospital at Breganze, near to where his machine had been shot down. She had tried to get to him; but it would have meant endless delays; and she had been anxious about her father. The Italian surgeons were very proud of him, he wrote. They had had him X-rayed before and after; and beyond a slight lameness which gave him, he thought, a touch of distinction, there was no flaw that the most careful scrutiny would be likely to detect. Any day, now, he expected to be discharged. Mary had married an old sweetheart. She had grown restless in the country with nothing to do, and, at the suggestion of some friends, had gone to Bristol to help in a children’s hospital; and there they had met once more.