“Not always forgotten,” answered Mrs. Denton; “mislaid, it may be, for the moment.  An Indian student, the son of an old Rajah, called on me a little while ago.  He was going back to organize a system of education among his people.  ’My father heard you speak when you were over in India,’ he told me.  ‘He has always been thinking about it.’  Thirty years ago it must have been, that I undertook that mission to India.  I had always looked back upon it as one of my many failures.”

“But why leave it to his son,” argued Joan.  “Why couldn’t the old man have set about it himself, instead of wasting thirty precious years?”

“I should have preferred it, myself,” agreed Mrs. Denton.  “I remember when I was a very little girl my mother longing for a tree upon the lawn underneath which she could sit.  I found an acorn and planted it just in the right spot.  I thought I would surprise her.  I happened to be in the neighbourhood last summer, and I walked over.  There was such a nice old lady sitting under it, knitting stockings.  So you see it wasn’t wasted.”

“I wouldn’t mind the waiting,” answered Joan, “if it were not for the sorrow and the suffering that I see all round me.  I want to get rid of it right away, now.  I could be patient for myself, but not for others.”

The little old lady straightened herself.  There came a hardening of the thin, firm mouth.

“And those that have gone before?” she demanded.  “Those that have won the ground from where we are fighting.  Had they no need of patience?  Was the cry never wrung from their lips:  ‘How long, oh Lord, how long?’ Is it for us to lay aside the sword that they bequeath us because we cannot hope any more than they to see the far-off victory?  Fifty years I have fought, and what, a few years hence, will my closing eyes still see but the banners of the foe still waving, fresh armies pouring to his standard?”

She flung back her head and the grim mouth broke into a smile.

“But I’ve won,” she said.  “I’m dying further forward.  I’ve helped advance the line.”

She put out her hands and drew Joan to her.

“Let me think of you,” she said, “as taking my place, pushing the outposts a little further on.”

Joan did not meet Hilda again till the child had grown into a woman—­practically speaking.  She had always been years older than her age.  It was at a reception given in the Foreign Office.  Joan’s dress had been trodden on and torn.  She had struggled out of the crowd into an empty room, and was examining the damage somewhat ruefully, when she heard a voice behind her, proffering help.  It was a hard, cold voice, that yet sounded familiar, and she turned.

There was no forgetting those deep, burning eyes, though the face had changed.  The thin red lips still remained its one touch of colour; but the unhealthy whiteness of the skin had given place to a delicate pallor; and the features that had been indistinct had shaped themselves in fine, firm lines.  It was a beautiful, arresting face, marred only by the sullen callousness of the dark, clouded eyes.