ow's description."

"It grows other things." His eyes were very kind. "Brave, helpful,
unselfish women, for instance."

"There is one!"

She indicated the tall, black-robed figure of the Mother with a quick
gesture of her little jewelled hand.

"And here is another." He touched her sleeve lightly with a finger-tip.

"Brave.... Helpful." Her voice was choky. "Do you think I shall ever
forget the hindrance I have been to you? Didn't I lose you your Boer spy?"

"Granted you did." His moustache curved cheerfully at the corners. "But
that's Ancient History, and look what you brought back!"

"A unit of the despised majority who is thoroughly convinced of her own
superfluousness. Hannah Wrynche, with the conceit so completely taken out
of her that she feels, say, like a deflated balloon; Hannah Wrynche, who
believed herself born to be a War Correspondent, and has come down to
scribbling gossipy paragraphs for a little siege newspaper printed in a
damp cellar."

He laughed.

"Collectors will pay fancy prices for copies of that same little siege
newspaper, at auctions yet to be."

"I've thought of that," she confessed. "But, oh! I could make it so much
more spicy if you'd only give me a freer hand."

His hazel eyes had a smile in them. "I know you think me an editorial
martinet."

"You blue-pencil out of my poor paragraphs everything that's interesting."

"No personalities shall be published in a paper I control."

"The Reading Public adore personalities and puerilities."

"They can go to the _Daily Whale_ for them, then."

"Isn't that rather a personal remark?"

"Let me say that if you are occasionally personal, you are never, under
any circumstances, anything but clever."

"Thank you. But, oh! the difference between what I am and what I aspired
to be!"

"And, ah! the difference between what I have done and what I meant to do!"
he said.

Her black eyes flashed. "You have never really felt it. Achievement with
you has never hit below the mark. You, of all men living, are least fitted
to enter into the rueful regrets and dismal disillusions of a Hannah
Wrynche."

"Hannah Wrynche, who is content to do a woman's work and fill a woman's
place; Hannah Wrynche, who has atoned for a moment of ambitious--shall I
say imprudence?--splendidly and nobly, has no reason to be rueful or
regretful. Don't shake your head. Do you think I don't know what you are
doing, day after day, to help and cheer those poor fellows