he people who can get harmed," argued Joan. "The men who will be
dragged away from their work, from their business, used as 'cannon
fodder.'"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, they are always eager enough for it, at
first," he answered. "There is the excitement. The curiosity. You must
remember that life is a monotonous affair to the great mass of the
people. There's the natural craving to escape from it; to court
adventure. They are not so enthusiastic about it after they have tasted
it. Modern warfare, they soon find, is about as dull a business as
science ever invented."

There was only one hope that he could see: and that was to switch the
people's mind on to some other excitement. His advices from London told
him that a parliamentary crisis was pending. Could not Mrs. Denton and
her party do something to hasten it? He, on his side, would consult with
the Socialist leaders, who might have something to suggest.

He met Joan, radiant, a morning or two later. The English Government had
resigned and preparations for a general election were already on foot.

"And God has been good to us, also," he explained.

A well-known artist had been found murdered in his bed and grave
suspicion attached to his beautiful young wife.

"She deserves the Croix de Guerre, if it is proved that she did it," he
thought. "She will have saved many thousands of lives--for the present."

Folk had fixed up a party at his studio to meet her. She had been there
once or twice; but this was a final affair. She had finished her
business in Paris and would be leaving the next morning. To her
surprise, she found Phillips there. He had come over hurriedly to attend
a Socialist conference, and Leblanc, the editor of _Le Nouveau Monde_,
had brought him along.

"I took Smedley's place at the last moment," he whispered to her. "I've
never been abroad before. You don't mind, do you?"

It didn't strike her as at all odd that a leader of a political party
should ask her "if she minded" his being in Paris to attend a political
conference. He was wearing a light grey suit and a blue tie. There was
nothing about him, at that moment, suggesting that he was a leader of any
sort. He might have been just any man, but for his eyes.

"No," she whispered. "Of course not. I don't like your tie." It seemed
to depress him, that.

She felt elated at the thought that he would see her for the first time
amid surroundings where she would shi