A. C. Swinburne.

Early morning brought Joan a letter from Dick. She had hardly slept all night. Once she had got up, determined to write him; the truth would look more cold and formal in a letter, but her courage had failed her, and instead she had sat crouched over the table, her body shaken with a storm of tears. Then Fanny had come in, an after-supper Fanny, noisy and sentimental, and she had had to be helped to bed, coughing and explaining that "life was good if you only knew how to live it." Joan had crept back to her own bed once the other girl had fallen asleep, and she had lain with wide eyes watching the night turn from blackness to soft grey, from grey to clear, bright yellow. There were dark shadows round her eyes in the morning, and her face was white and strained-looking.

Fanny was much perturbed by Joan's appearance when she was sufficiently awake to notice it.

"My, honey, you do look bad," she gasped. "Daddy Brown will see I was talking the truth last night, which is a good thing in one way. He was most particularly anxious to see you last night, was very fussed when he found you hadn't come." She paused and studied Joan's face from under her lashes. "Did you meet him?" she inquired finally.

"Yes," Joan admitted; she turned away from the other's inquisitive eyes. "He walked home with me."

"I told him you had a headache and were not coming to supper with us," Fanny confessed. "It is no use being annoyed with me, honey. I thought it over and it seemed to me that by saying 'No' to him because of something that happened before he knew you, you were cutting off your nose to spite your face. Not that I personally should tell him," she added reflectively; "he is too straight himself to understand a woman doing wrong; but that is for you to decide. One thing I do know: it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his wanting to marry you; he is too much in love for that."

She was saying aloud the fear which had knocked at Joan's heart all night. It might be true that Dick was too much in love to let what she had to tell him stand between them. But afterwards, when love had had time to cool, when trust and good-fellowship would be called on to take the place of passion, when he saw her, perhaps, with his child in her arms, how would he look at her then? Would he not remember and regret, would not a shadow stand between them, a shadow from the one sin which no man can forgive in a woman? She was like a creature brought to bay; he had guessed that she loved him; what arguments could she use, how stand firm in her denial against that knowledge?

For a little she had thought of the possibility of his taking her just as Gilbert had done. She was not worthy to be his wife, but she would be content, she knew, to follow him to the end of the world. Not because she viewed the matter now in the same light as she had done in those days. She had never loved Gilbert; if she had, shame and disgrace would have been powerless to drive her from his side, and she would have wanted him to marry her, just as now she wanted marriage with Dick. It seemed to her that, despite pioneers and rebels and the need for greater freedom, which she and girls like her had been fighting for, the initial fact remained and would always remain the same. When you loved you wanted to belong to the man absolutely and entirely; freedom counted for very little, you wanted to give him your life, you wanted to have the right to bear his children. That was what it all came down to in the end; Love was bigger and stronger than any ideas, and marriage had been built upon the law of Love.

Daddy Brown came round in the course of the morning to talk over his new idea for Joan's future. It appeared that if she was willing to think it over, he would pay for her to have singing and dancing lessons during the winter. That was, of course, provided the War did not come off. If it did, as he had said once before to Fanny, there would not be any Spring tours for the Brown Company.

"But war isn't likely," he spoke heavily. "England has too much to lose to go running into it if she can steer clear, and there's my offer, my girl. I think, from what I saw last night, that if you like to put your heart into it you ought to make something of an actress. You have distinct ability, and you have charm, which is on the good side too."

Joan was hardly in the mood to pay much attention to her future prospects; the present loomed too forbiddingly ahead of her. She would let him know, she told him finally; she was most awfully grateful to him for his suggestion, but she must have at least a fortnight to think things out and decide what she was going to do.

"Very well," Brown agreed, he rose to take his leave; "but mind you, it is worth considering, young lady; you don't get such an offer every day."

Fanny was staying behind for another day; she had some amusement in store with Swetenham which she did not want to miss, but the rest of the company, Joan included, caught the three o'clock train back to town. Joan could not refuse to go with them, but the journey was one long torture to her; she wanted to get right away by herself; there was only one day left in which to plan and make ready for Dick's visit. Some of Brown's ponderous remarks as to the probable effect of a war on the theatrical profession had filtered down to the junior members of the company. They talked together rather mournfully as to what the winter might be going to mean for them. "If it knocks pantomimes, we are done," Grace Binning summed up the situation. But Grace Binning was inclined to be mournful; as Mrs. O'Malley said, her sprained ankle would keep her out of work in any case for six weeks.

At Victoria Station Strachan ferreted out Joan's luggage and hailed a taxi for her.

"Good-bye," he said to her at the last—they had always been very good friends, with a little encouragement he might have considered himself in love with her—"and good luck. Also, if you will excuse me saying so, Miss Rutherford, I should marry that faithful young man. You are not a bit suited or happy in our life."

Then he drew back his head quickly and smiled at her as the taxi started off.

Joan had written to Mrs. Carew, asking her to see about a room, and found to her relief that her old attic was still at her disposal.

"Thought you would find it homelike," Mrs. Carew panted up the stairs in front of her, "and for that matter it has been shut up since you left. Bad year for letting this has been."

Obviously the room had been shut up since she left. Joan struggled with the fast-closed window and threw it open, but even so the place retained an atmosphere of overpowering stuffiness, and presently, not staying to unpack or open the letter which had been waiting for her on the hall table, she sallied out again in search of fresh air.

She would walk to Knightsbridge, she decided, and so on through the Park. If she tired herself out perhaps she would be able to sleep when she went to bed, and sleep was what she needed almost more than anything else.

The Park was deserted and sun-swept; it had been an exceptionally hot summer, the trees and bushes seemed smothered under a weight of dust. Joan found a seat in sight of one of the stretches of water and opened her letter. It was from Miss Abercrombie, that she had known from the envelope, and written from the Rutherford home at Wrotham.

"Dear Joan," the letter ran:

"Your people are home, they have just come back from abroad and had a very tiresome journey over because of the mobilization on the Continent. Janet wrote, or rather your uncle wrote for her, asking me to be here to meet them. Janet is very ill, she will never be able to walk or stand up again in her life. They have tried all sorts of things for her abroad, now it has come to the last. All day, and most of the night, for she sleeps very badly, she lies flat on her back, and all the time her eyes seem to be watching for something. She speaks very little, everything seems to be shut away in her heart, but yesterday—after having first talked the matter over with your uncle—I went up to her room and asked her point blank: 'Janet, aren't you eating out your heart for Joan?' and she nodded stiffly, the tears in her eyes. So I sat right down and told her all about you: about your accident, about the hard (child, I know it has been hard) fight you have had, and at the end I said: 'Shall I send for her, Janet?' This time when she nodded the tears were streaming down her face. So I am sending for you. Don't let pride or anger stand between you, enough anguish has been caused already on both sides, and she is practically dying. Come, child, show a charity which your struggle will have taught you, and help to make her going a little easier, for she has always loved you, and her heart breaks for the need of you."