“And if he can’t?” suggested Joan. “I am getting thin, ain’t I?” she said. “I always wanted to be thin.” They both laughed.!

“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.” “I’ve heard of him,” said Mrs. Phillips. “He’s worth reading, isn’t he?”

He insisted on seeing her as far as the bus. It was a soft, mild night; and they walked round the Circle to Gloucester Gate. He thought there would be more room in the buses at that point. Mary had been clasping and unclasping her hands, a habit of hers when troubled. Could good ever come out of evil? That was her doubt. Did war ever do anything but sow the seeds of future violence; substitute one injustice for another; change wrong for wrong. Did it ever do anything but add to the world’s sum of evil, making God’s task the heavier? Carleton himself never interrupted them. Indeed, one might have thought he was not listening, so engrossed he appeared to be in the pile of letters and telegrams that lay waiting for him on his desk. When they had finished he would ask them questions, still with his attention fixed apparently upon the paper in his hand. Then, looking up for the first time, he would run off curt instructions, much in the tone of a Commander-in-Chief giving orders for an immediate assault; and, finishing abruptly, return to his correspondence. When the last, as it transpired, had closed the door behind him, he swung his chair round and faced her.