Mr. Simson was visibly shocked. Evidently he was less familiar with the opinions of The Rationalist than he had thought. Mary lived in a tiny house behind a strip of garden. It stood in a narrow side street between two public-houses, and was covered with ivy. It had two windows above and a window and a door below. The upstairs rooms belonged to the churchwardens and were used as a storehouse for old parish registers, deemed of little value. Mary Stopperton and her bedridden husband lived in the two rooms below. Mary unlocked the door, and Joan passed in and waited. Mary lit a candle that was standing on a bracket and turned to lead the way.!

“Ivanoff’s,” explained the Human Document. “He was our only child.” Suddenly she heard a light step in the passage, and the room door opened. A girl entered. She was wearing a large black hat and a black boa round her neck. Between them her face shone unnaturally white. She carried a small cloth bag. She started, on seeing Joan, and seemed about to retreat.

“I felt it just the same when young Mr. McKean left us,” she explained with apologies. “He had been with us five years. He was like you, miss, so unpracticable. I’d got used to looking after him.” Flossie interrupted. “How about being quite frank?” she suggested. “Suppose we do love one another. How about putting it that way?” “I had a long talk with Nan last night,” he said. “And, trying to explain it to her, I came a little nearer to understanding it myself. My love for you would have been strong enough to ruin both of us. I see that now. It would have dominated every other thought in me. It would have swallowed up my dreams. It would have been blind, unscrupulous. Married to you, I should have aimed only at success. It would not have been your fault. You would not have known. About mere birth I should never have troubled myself. I’ve met daughters of a hundred earls—more or less: clever, jolly little women I could have chucked under the chin and have been chummy with. Nature creates her own ranks, and puts her ban upon misalliances. Every time I took you in my arms I should have felt that you had stepped down from your proper order to mate yourself with me and that it was up to me to make the sacrifice good to you by giving you power—position. Already within the last few weeks, when it looked as if this thing was going to be possible, I have been thinking against my will of a compromise with Carleton that would give me his support. This coming election was beginning to have terrors for me that I have never before felt. The thought of defeat—having to go back to comparative poverty, to comparative obscurity, with you as my wife, was growing into a nightmare. I should have wanted wealth, fame, victory, for your sake—to see you honoured, courted, envied, finely dressed and finely housed—grateful to me for having won for you these things. It wasn’t honest, healthy love—the love that unites, that makes a man willing to take as well as to give, that I felt for you; it was worship that separates a man from a woman, that puts fear between them. It isn’t good that man should worship a woman. He can’t serve God and woman. Their interests are liable to clash. Nan’s my helpmate—just a loving woman that the Lord brought to me and gave me when I was alone—that I still love. I didn’t know it till last night. She will never stand in my way. I haven’t to put her against my duty. She will leave me free to obey the voice that calls to me. And no man can hear that voice but himself.”