He nodded. “I thought you were an artist,” he said. “Don’t let them ever take your drum away from you. You’ll go to pieces and get into mischief without it.” She flung back her head and the grim mouth broke into a smile.!

The whole man had changed. The eyes had a timid pleading in them. Joan was puzzled what to say. She knew exactly what she ought to say: what she would have said to any ordinary child. But to say it to this uncannily knowing little creature did not promise much good.

“Oh, he’s quite a nice lad,” she answered. And she had promised him. He needed her. The words she had spoken to Madge, not dreaming then of their swift application. They came back to her. “God has called me. He girded His sword upon me.” What right had she to leave it rusting in its scabbard, turning aside from the pathway pointed out to her because of one weak, useless life, crouching in her way. It was not as if she were being asked to do evil herself that good might come. The decision had been taken out of her hands. All she had to do was to remain quiescent, not interfering, awaiting her orders. Her business was with her own part, not with another’s. To be willing to sacrifice oneself: that was at the root of all service. Sometimes it was one’s own duty, sometimes that of another. Must one never go forward because another steps out of one’s way, voluntarily? Besides, she might have been mistaken. That picture, ever before her, of the woman pausing with the brush above her tongue—that little stilled gasp! It may have been but a phantasm, born of her own fevered imagination. She clung to that, desperately. Mary joined them, and went straight to Miss Ensor’s bag and opened it. She shook her head at the contents, which consisted of a small, flabby-looking meat pie in a tin dish, and two pale, flat mince tarts.