come into close contact with a living example of the type he had always believed in. Here was a woman whose interests were all outside herself. The fact thrilled and electrified him, just as the peculiar nature of her work made a powerful and intimate appeal to his heart.
As the days passed, and they came to know or another better, she told him frankly about the small beginnings of her work, and then how Dick's idea had caught her up and carried her away to where she now was.
'There was so much to be done, and so much help needed, that at first,' she admitted, 'my own little efforts seemed absurd; and then he showed me that if everybody talked like that nothing would ever be accomplished. So I got up and tried. It was something definite and practical. I let my bigger dreams go—'
'Well done,' he interrupted, wondering for a moment what those 'bigger dreams' could have been.
'and chose the certainty. And I have never regretted it, though sometimes, of course, I am still tempted—'
'That was fine of you,' he said. He realised vaguely that she would gladly, perhaps, have spoken to him of those 'other dreams,' but it was not quite clear to him that his sympathy could be of any avail, and he did not know how to offer it either. To ask direct questions of such a woman savoured to his delicate mind of impertinence.
'There was nothing "fine "about it,' she laughed, after an imperceptible pause; 'it was natural, that's all. I couldn't help myself really. Human suffering has always called to me very searchingly. Au fond, you see, it was almost selfishness.'
He suddenly felt unaccountably small with this slip of a woman at his side, tired, overworked, giving all her best years so gladly away, and even in her 'holidays' thinking of her work more than of herself. He noticed, too, the passing flames that lit fires in her eyes and illumined her entire face sometimes when she spoke of her London waifs. Pity and admiration ran together in his thoughts, the latter easily predominating.
'But you must make the most of your holiday,' he said presently; 'you will use up your forces too soon—'
'Perhaps,' she laughed, 'perhaps. Only I get restless with the feeling that I'm wanted elsewhere. There's so little time to do anything. The years pass so quickly—after thirty; and if you always wait till you're "quite fit," you wait for ever, and nothing gets done.'
Paul turned and looked steadily at her for a moment. A sudden beauty, like a white and shining fire, leaped into her face, flashed about the eyes and mouth, and was gone. Paul never forgot that look to the end of his days.
'By Jove,' he said, 'you are in earnest!'
'Not more than others,' she said simply; 'not as much as many, even, I'm afraid. A good soldier goes on fighting whether he's "fit "or not, doesn't he?'
'He ought to,' said Paul—humbly, for some reason he could hardly explain.
They had many similar talks. She told him a great deal about her rescue work in London, and he, for his part, became more and more interested. From a distance, meanwhile, his sister observed them curiously,—though nothing that was in Margaret's thoughts ever for a single instant found its way either into his mind or Joan's. It was natural, of course, that Margaret, the reader of modern novels, should have formed certain conclusions, and perhaps it would have been the obvious and natural thing for Joan and Paul to have fallen in love and been happy ever afterwards with children of their own. It would also, no doubt, have been 'artistic,' and the way things are made to happen in novels.
But in real life things are not cut always so neatly to measure, and whether real life is artistic or not as a whole cannot be judged until the true, far end is known. For the perspective is wanting; the scale is on a vaster loom; and of the threads that weave into the pattern and out again, neither end nor beginning are open to inspection.
The novels Margaret delighted in, with their hotch-potch of duchesses and valets, Ministers of State and footmen, libertines and snobs, while doubtless portraying certain phases of modern life with accuracy, could in no way prepare her for the Pattern that was being woven beneath her eyes by the few and simple characters in this entirely veracious history. And it may be assumed, therefore, that Joan had come into the scenery of Paul's life with no such commonplace motive—since the high Gods held the threads and wove them to their own satisfaction—as merely to marry off the hero.
And if Paul did not fall in love with Joan Nicholson, as he might, or ought, to have done, he at least did the next best thing to it. He fell head over ears in love with her work. And since love seeks ever to imitate and to possess, he cast about in his heart for means by which he might accomplish these ends. Already he possessed her secret. Now he had only to imitate her methods.
He was finding his way to a bigger and better means of self-expression than he had yet dreamed of; while Nixie, the dea ex machina, for ever flitted on ahead and showed the way.
It remained a fairy-tale of the most delightful kind. That, at least, he realised clearly.
CHAPTER XXII
Among the branches of the ilex tree, whose thick foliage rose like a giant swarm of bees at the end of the lawn, there were three dark spots visible that might have puzzled the most expert botanist until he came close enough to examine them in detail. The fact that the birds avoided the tree at this particular hour of the evening, when they might otherwise have loved to perch and sing, hidden among the dense shiny leaves, would very likely have furnished a clue, and have suggested to him—if he were a really intelligent man of science—that these dark spots were of human origin.
In the order in which they rose from the ground towards the top they were, in fact, Toby, Joan Nicholson, Paul, Nixie and, highest of all, Jonah. Paul felt safer in the big fork, Joan in the wide seat with the back. In the upper branches Jonah perched, singing and chattering. Toby hummed to herself happily nearer the ground, and Nixie, her legs swinging dizzily over a serpentine branch immediately above Paul's head, was really the safest of the lot, though she looked ready to drop at any moment.
They were all at rest, these wingless human birds, in the tree where Paul had long ago made seats and staircases and bell-ropes.
I 'wish the wind would come,' said Nixie. 'It would make us all swing about.'
'And Jonah would lose his balance and bring the lot of us down like ripe fruit,' said Paul.
'On the top of Toby at the bottom,' added Joan.
'But my house is well built,' Paul objected, 'or it would never have held such a lot of visitors as it did yesterday.'
'Look out! I'm slipping!' cried Jonah suddenly overhead. 'No! I'm all right again now,' he added a second later, having thoroughly alarmed the lodgers on the lower floors, and sent down a shower of bark and twigs.
'It's certainly more solid than your "Scaffolding of Night," Joan observed mischievously as soon as the shower was past; 'though, perhaps, not quite as beautiful.' And presently she added, 'I think I never saw boys enjoy themselves so much in my life. They'll remember it as long as they live.'
'It was your idea,' he said.
'But you carried it out for me!'
They were resting after prolonged labours that had been, at the same time, a prolonged delight. At three o'clock that
