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Persons with real force of purpose carry about with them something that charges unconsciously the atmosphere of others. Paul 'felt' this woman. The first impact of her presence, as has been seen, came almost as a shock. The 'shocks,' however, did not continue—as such. Her influence worked in him underground, as it were.

She slipped easily and naturally into the quiet routine of the little household in the Grey House under the hill, till it seemed as if she had been there always. Margaret had insisted at once that there could be no 'Missing' and 'Mistering'; Dick's niece must be Joan, and her brother Paul; and the more familiar terms of address were adopted without effort on both sides.

The children helped, too. They were all in the same Society, and before a week had passed she had heard all the 'aventures,' and entered into the discovery of new ones, even contributing some herself with a zest that delighted, Paul, and made him feel wholly at his ease with her. It was all real to her; she could not otherwise have shown an interest; for sham had no part in her nature, and her love for these fatherless children was as great as his own, and similar in kind.

'You have given their "Society" a new lease of life,' she told him; 'you are an enormous addition to it.'

'Enormous—yes! 'he laughed.

'Enormously useful at the same time,' she laughed in return, 'because you not only increase their imagination; you train it, and show them how to Use it.'

'To say nothing of the indirect benefits I receive myself,' he added.

And, after a pause, she said: 'For myself, too, it's the best kind of holiday I could possibly have. To come down here into all this, straight from my waifs in London, is like coming into that Crack-land you have shown them. I wish—I wish I could introduce it all to my big sad world of unwashed urchins. They have so few chances.' A sudden flash of enthusiasm ran over her face like sunlight. 'Perhaps, when they come down here next week for a day's outing, we might try!—if you will help me, that is?' She looked up. Something in the simple words touched him; her singleness of aim stirred the depths in him.

He promised eagerly.

'When it's out,' she added presently, 'I'm going to give copies of your book of aventures to some of them. A good many will understand'

'You shall have as many as you can use,' he put in quickly, with a thrill of pleasure he hardly understood. 'I'm only too delighted to think they could be of any use—any real use, I mean.'

There was something in the simple earnestness of this woman, in the devotion of her life to an unselfish Cause, that increased daily his dissatisfaction with himself. She never said a word that suggested self-sacrifice. A call had come to her, turning her entire life into an instrument for helping others—others who might never realise enough to say, 'Thank you'—and she had accepted it. Now she lived it, that was all. The Scheme that had provided the call, too, was Dick's. It was all conceived originally in that big practical, imaginative heart of the one intimate friendship he had known. Moreover, it concerned children, lost children. The appeal to the deepest in himself was thus reinforced in several ways. More and more, beside this quiet, determined woman, with her singleness of aim and her practical idealism, his own life seemed trivial, cheap, selfish. She had found a medium of expression, self-expression, compared to which his own mind was insignificant.

From the 'Man who splashed on the Deck' to Joan Nicholson was a far cry; as far almost as from the amoeba to the dog—yet both the man and the woman knew the relief of Outlet. And, now, he too was learning in his own time and place the same truth. Nixie had brought him far. Joan, perhaps, was to bring him farther still.

Yet there was nothing about her that was very unusual. There are scores and scores of unmarried women like her sprinkled all along the quiet ways of life, noble, unselfish, unrecognised, often, no doubt, utterly unappreciated, turning the whole current of their lives into work for others—the best they can find. The ordinary man who, for the mother of his children seeks first of all physical beauty, or perhaps some worldly standard of attractiveness, passes them by. Their great force, thus apparently neglected by Nature for her more obvious purposes, runs along through more hidden channels, achieving great things with but little glory or reward. To Paul, who knew nothing of modern types, and whose knowledge of women was abstract rather than concrete, she appeared, of course, simply normal. For all women he conceived as noble and unselfish, capable naturally of sacrifice and devotion. To him they were all saints, more or less, and Joan Nicholson came upon the scene of his life merely as an ordinarily presentable specimen of the great species he had always dreamt about.

But it was the first time he had 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 one 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.