st your rivals. I want to
see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want
to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted
pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea--left to rot
upon the ground while men are hungry--side-tracked in Chicago, while the
children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized."

He had been staring through her rather than at her, so it had seemed to
Joan. Suddenly their eyes met, and he broke into a smile.

"I'm so awfully sorry," he said. "I've been talking to you as if you
were a public meeting. I'm afraid I'm more used to them than I am to
women. Please forgive me."

The whole man had changed. The eyes had a timid pleading in them.

Joan laughed. "I've been feeling as if I were the King of Bavaria," she
said.

"How did he feel?" he asked her, leaning forward.

"He had his own private theatre," Joan explained, "where Wagner gave his
operas. And the King was the sole audience."

"I should have hated that," he said, "if I had been Wagner."

He looked at her, and a flush passed over his boyish face.

"All right," he said, "if it had been a queen."

Joan found herself tracing patterns with her spoon upon the tablecloth.
"But you have won now," she said, still absorbed apparently with her
drawing, "you are going to get your chance."

He gave a short laugh. "A trick," he said, "to weaken me. They think to
shave my locks; show me to the people bound by their red tape. To put it
another way, a rat among the terriers."

Joan laughed. "You don't somehow suggest the rat," she said: "rather
another sort of beast."

"What do you advise me?" he asked. "I haven't decided yet."

They were speaking in whispered tones. Through the open doors they could
see into the other room. Mrs. Phillips, under Airlie's instructions, was
venturing upon a cigarette.

"To accept," she answered. "They won't influence you--the terriers, as
you call them. You are too strong. It is you who will sway them. It
isn't as if you were a mere agitator. Take this opportunity of showing
them that you can build, plan, organize; that you were meant to be a
ruler. You can't succeed without them, as things are. You've got to win
them over. Prove to them that they can trust you."

He sat for a minute tattooing with his fingers on the table, before
speaking.

"It's the frills and flummery part of it that frightens me," h