Mary’s work was finished.  She sat upright in her straight-backed chair before the table, her eyes half closed.  It seemed so odd to see those little work-worn hands idle upon her lap.

Joan’s present lay on the table near to her, as if she had just folded it and placed it there:  the little cap and the fine robe of lawn:  as if for a king’s child.

Joan had never thought that Death could be so beautiful.  It was as if some friend had looked in at the door, and, seeing her so tired, had taken the work gently from her hands, and had folded them upon her lap.  And she had yielded with a smile.

Joan heard a faint rustle and looked up.  A woman had entered.  It was the girl she had met there on a Christmas Day, a Miss Ensor.  Joan had met her once or twice since then.  She was still in the chorus.  Neither of them spoke for a few minutes.

“I have been expecting every morning to find her gone,” said the girl.  “I think she only waited to finish this.”  She gently unfolded the fine lawn robe, and they saw the delicate insertion and the wonderful, embroidery.

“I asked her once,” said the girl, “why she wasted so much work on them.  They were mostly only for poor people.  ‘One never knows, dearie,’ she answered, with that childish smile of hers.  ’It may be for a little Christ.’”

They would not let less loving hands come near her.

* * * * *

Her father had completed his business, and both were glad to leave London.  She had a sense of something sinister, foreboding, casting its shadow on the sordid, unclean streets, the neglected buildings falling into disrepair.  A lurking savagery, a half-veiled enmity seemed to be stealing among the people.  The town’s mad lust for pleasure:  its fierce, unjoyous laughter:  its desire ever to be in crowds as if afraid of itself:  its orgies of eating and drinking:  its animal-like indifference to the misery and death that lay but a little way beyond its own horizon!  She dared not remember history.  Perhaps it would pass.

The long, slow journey tried her father’s strength, and assuming an authority to which he yielded obedience tempered by grumbling, Joan sent him to bed, and would not let him come down till Christmas Day.  The big, square house was on the outskirts of the town where it was quiet, and in the afternoon they walked in the garden sheltered behind its high brick wall.

He told her of what had been done at the works.  Arthur’s plan had succeeded.  It might not be the last word, but at least it was on the road to the right end.  The men had been brought into it and shared the management.  And the disasters predicted had proved groundless.

“You won’t be able to indulge in all your mad schemes,” he laughed, “but there’ll be enough to help on a few.  And you will be among friends.  Arthur told me he had explained it to you and that you had agreed.”

“Yes,” she answered.  “It was the last time he came to see me in London.  And I could not help feeling a bit jealous.  He was doing things while I was writing and talking.  But I was glad he was an Allway.  It will be known as the Allway scheme.  New ways will date from it.”