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 shine.  Folk came forward to meet her with that charming air of protective deference that he had adopted towards her.  He might have been some favoured minister of state kissing the hand of a youthful Queen.  She glanced down the long studio, ending in its fine window overlooking the park.  Some of the most distinguished men in Paris were there, and the immediate stir of admiration that her entrance had created was unmistakable.  Even the women turned pleased glances at her; as if willing to recognize in her their representative.  A sense of power came to her that made her feel kind to all the world.  There was no need for her to be clever:  to make any effort to attract.  Her presence, her sympathy, her approval seemed to be all that was needed of her.  She had the consciousness that by the mere exercise of her will she could sway the thoughts and actions of these men:  that sovereignty had been given to her.  It reflected itself in her slightly heightened colour, in the increased brilliance of her eyes, in the confident case of all her movements.  It added a compelling softness to her voice.

She never quite remembered what the talk was about.  Men were brought up and presented to her, and hung about her words, and sought to please her.  She had spoken her own thoughts, indifferent whether they expressed agreement or not; and the argument had invariably taken another plane.  It seemed so important that she should be convinced.  Some had succeeded, and had been strengthened.  Others had failed, and had departed sorrowful, conscious of the necessity of “thinking it out again.”