lips parted.
The savage music quickened. It shrilled and skrealed. The blood came
surging through her veins.

And suddenly something lying hidden there leaped to life within her
brain. A mad desire surged hold of her to rise and shout defiance at
those three thousand pairs of hostile eyes confronting her. She clutched
at the arms of her chair and so kept her seat. The pibroch ended with
its wild sad notes of wailing, and slowly the mist cleared from her eyes,
and the stage was empty. A strange hush had fallen on the house.

She was not aware that her hostess had been watching her. She was a
sweet-faced, white-haired lady. She touched Joan lightly on the hand.
"That's the trouble," she whispered. "It's in our blood."

Could we ever hope to eradicate it? Was not the survival of this
fighting instinct proof that war was still needful to us? In the
sculpture-room of an exhibition she came upon a painted statue of
Bellona. Its grotesqueness shocked her at first sight, the red streaming
hair, the wild eyes filled with fury, the wide open mouth--one could
almost hear it screaming--the white uplifted arms with outstretched
hands! Appalling! Terrible! And yet, as she gazed at it, gradually the
thing grew curiously real to her. She seemed to hear the gathering of
the chariots, the neighing of the horses, the hurrying of many feet, the
sound of an armouring multitude, the shouting, and the braying of the
trumpets.

These cold, thin-lipped calculators, arguing that "War doesn't pay";
those lank-haired cosmopolitans, preaching their "International," as if
the only business of mankind were wages! War still was the stern school
where men learnt virtue, duty, forgetfulness of self, faithfulness unto
death.

This particular war, of course, must be stopped: if it were not already
too late. It would be a war for markets; for spheres of commercial
influence; a sordid war that would degrade the people. War, the supreme
test of a nation's worth, must be reserved for great ideals. Besides,
she wanted to down Carleton.

One of the women on her list, and the one to whom Mrs. Denton appeared to
attach chief importance, a Madame de Barante, disappointed Joan. She
seemed to have so few opinions of her own. She had buried her young
husband during the Franco-Prussian war. He had been a soldier. And she
had remained unmarried. She was still beautiful.

"I do not think we women have the right to discuss war," she confi