All Goddard could say was that the scheme had been perfect. He tried to say more, but his unaccustomed brain refused to formulate in words subtleties of emotion. But before leaving he had a sudden inspiration. “I feel a different man since I have seen you,” he said abruptly; “I was inclined to be harassed and despondent. Now---- ‘Strange how a smile of God can change the world.’ That’s what you seem to be.” Lady Phayre turned away her head and blushed. She knew it was like a school-girl, but she could not help it. No one had ever told her quite that before. The glimpse into spiritual things rather frightened her. She did not know whether to be angry or pleased at being enraptured. Like a wise woman, she decided upon indefiniteness. But she could not hide a certain softness in her eyes as she bade him good-bye. “I shall be in the Salvation Army Barracks at nine this evening. If you could help me just a little--unless you are too busy?” He promised, delighted, and went away on house-to-house visits in the dark byways of the town, spreading everywhere, with great voice and hearty gestures, the overflow of his happiness. He felt himself filled with the spirit of victory. One man refused to be comforted. “Strikes never did no good,” he said. Goddard drew himself up, towered over him, and rated him for pusillanimity. If he could have spoken his inmost heart, he would have shouted-- “Man, don’t you see that I am unconquerable!” And so for the next few days the men were held together and lifted by the one man’s happiness. Meanwhile the Children’s Tavern was a great success. Lady Phayre worked indefatigably, serving herself, with other helpers, behind the trestles ranged round the great bare hall and creaking beneath the load of great tea-ums, mountains of bread and butter, and, in the morning, steaming pans of porridge. Goddard loved to make his way through the crowd of clamorous unwashed children to the place where Lady Phayre, deliciously fresh in white bib-apron and turned-back cuffs, was busily dispensing viands, receiving pence and halfpence from grubby little hands, and paying for countless moneyless urchins from a great private store of coppers by her side. And after the press was over, she would emerge from behind the trestles and walk up and down the hall with him discussing affairs. Never had she seemed so near to him as now when a common interest united them. But in Goddard’s fresh, newly-awakened idealism, it was not her arm that brushed his on a common level, but it was her wings that touched his head. Sometimes he would meet her in the streets, on a round of visits among such homes as she knew; sometimes he would see her sitting in the dog-cart, with her host, on the outskirts of a crowd he was addressing. Once she even persuaded him to accept a dinner invitation at the Wentworths’. She grew more into his life daily.