ed round the room. "Have I got to pass
all this crowd, I wonder?" he added.

Joan's eyes followed. It was certainly an odd collection. Flossie, in
her hunt for brains, had issued her invitations broadcast; and her fate
had been that of the Charity concert. Not all the stars upon whom she
had most depended had turned up. On the other hand not a single freak
had failed her. At the moment, the centre of the room was occupied by a
gentleman and two ladies in classical drapery. They were holding hands
in an attitude suggestive of a bas-relief. Joan remembered them, having
seen them on one or two occasions wandering in the King's Road, Chelsea;
still maintaining, as far as the traffic would allow, the bas-relief
suggestion; and generally surrounded by a crowd of children, ever hopeful
that at the next corner they would stop and do something really
interesting. They belonged to a society whose object was to lure the
London public by the force of example towards the adoption of the early
Greek fashions and the simpler Greek attitudes. A friend of Flossie's
had thrown in her lot with them, but could never be induced to abandon
her umbrella. They also, as Joan told herself, were reformers. Near to
them was a picturesque gentleman with a beard down to his waist whose
"stunt"--as Flossie would have termed it--was hygienic clothing; it
seemed to contain an undue proportion of fresh air. There were ladies in
coats and stand-up collars, and gentlemen with ringlets. More than one
of the guests would have been better, though perhaps not happier, for a
bath.

"I fancy that's the idea," said Joan. "What will you do if you fail? Go
back to China?"

"Yes," he answered. "And take her with me. Poor little girl."

Joan rather resented his tone.

"We are not all alike," she remarked. "Some of us are quite sane."

He looked straight into her eyes. "You are," he said. "I have been
reading your articles. They are splendid. I'm going to help."

"How can you?" she said. "I mean, how will you?"

"Shipping is my business," he said. "I'm going to help sailor men. See
that they have somewhere decent to go to, and don't get robbed. And then
there are the Lascars, poor devils. Nobody ever takes their part."

"How did you come across them?" she asked. "The articles, I mean. Did
Flo give them to you?"

"No," he answered. "Just chance. Caught sight of your photo."

"Tell me," she said. "If it had been the photo of