e her, and see if I
can get at something," and she went away.

It was the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Promotion of the
Birth Rate, over which she had promised to preside. The scheme was one
in which she had been prominent from the start, appealing as it did to
her large and full-blooded nature. Many movements, to which she found it
impossible to refuse her name, had in themselves but small attraction;
and it was a real comfort to feel something approaching enthusiasm for
one branch of her public work. Not that there was any academic
consistency about her in the matter, for in private life amongst her
friends she was not narrowly dogmatic on the duty of wives to multiply
exceedingly. She thought imperially on the subject, without bigotry.
Large, healthy families, in all cases save individual ones! The prime
idea at the back of her mind was--National Expansion! Her motto, and she
intended if possible to make it the motto of the League, was: 'De
l'audace, et encore de l'audace!' It was a question of the full
realization of the nation. She had a true, and in a sense touching belief
in 'the flag,' apart from what it might cover. It was her idealism.
"You may talk," she would say, "as much as you like about directing
national life in accordance with social justice! What does the nation
care about social justice? The thing is much bigger than that. It's a
matter of sentiment. We must expand!"

On the way to the meeting, occupied with her speech, she made no attempt
to draw Barbara into conversation. That must wait. The child, though
languid, and pale, was looking so beautiful that it was a pleasure to
have her support in such a movement.

In a little dark room behind the hall the Committee were already
assembled, and they went at once on to the platform.

CHAPTER II

Unmoved by the stares of the audience, Barbara sat absorbed in moody
thoughts.

Into the three weeks since Miltoun's election there had been crowded such
a multitude of functions that she had found, as it were, no time, no
energy to know where she stood with herself. Since that morning in the
stable, when he had watched her with the horse Hal, Harbinger had seemed
to live only to be close to her. And the consciousness of his passion
gave her a tingling sense of pleasure. She had been riding and dancing
with him, and sometimes this had been almost blissful. But there were
times too, when she felt--though always with a cert