“I wonder how many of my ideals will be left to me,” sighed Joan.  “I always used to regard the Press as the modern pulpit.”

“The old pulpit became an evil, the moment it obtained unlimited power,” answered Mrs. Denton.  “It originated persecution and inflamed men’s passions against one another.  It, too, preached war for its own ends, taught superstition, and punished thought as a crime.  The Press of to-day is stepping into the shoes of the medieval priest.  It aims at establishing the worst kind of tyranny:  the tyranny over men’s minds.  They pretend to fight among themselves, but it’s rapidly becoming a close corporation.  The Institute of Journalists will soon be followed by the Union of Newspaper Proprietors and the few independent journals will be squeezed out.  Already we have German shareholders on English papers; and English capital is interested in the St. Petersburg Press.  It will one day have its International Pope and its school of cosmopolitan cardinals.”

Joan laughed.  “I can see Carleton rather fancying himself in a tiara,” she said.  “I must tell Phillips what you say.  He’s out for a fight with him.  Government by Parliament or Government by Press is going to be his war cry.”

“Good man,” said Mrs. Denton.  “I’m quite serious.  You tell him from me that the next revolution has got to be against the Press.  And it will be the stiffest fight Democracy has ever had.”

The old lady had tired herself.  Joan undertook the mission.  She thought she would rather enjoy it, and Mrs. Denton promised to let her have full instructions.  She would write to her friends in Paris and prepare them for Joan’s coming.

Joan remembered Folk, the artist she had met at Flossie’s party, who had promised to walk with her on the terrace at St. Germain, and tell her more about her mother.  She looked up his address on her return home, and wrote to him, giving him the name of the hotel in the Rue de Grenelle where Mrs. Denton had arranged that she should stay.  She found a note from him awaiting her when she arrived there.  He thought she would like to be quiet after her journey.  He would call round in the morning.  He had presumed on the privilege of age to send her some lilies.  They had been her mother’s favourite flower.  “Monsieur Folk, the great artist,” had brought them himself, and placed them in her dressing-room, so Madame informed her.

It was one of the half-dozen old hotels still left in Paris, and was built round a garden famous for its mighty mulberry tree.  She breakfasted underneath it, and was reading there when Folk appeared before her, smiling and with his hat in his hand.  He excused himself for intruding upon her so soon, thinking from what she had written him that her first morning might be his only chance.  He evidently considered her remembrance of him a feather in his cap.

“We old fellows feel a little sadly, at times, how unimportant we are,” he explained.  “We are grateful when Youth throws us a smile.”