"Yet you can buy me just as you could them," Mabel whispered.

"No"—again he shook his head. "I am not making that mistake either. I know just why I can buy you. Anyway, let us put that aside. This is the case as I see it. I have money, heaps of it; I have a good large house and servants eating their heads off. I will make Mrs. Grant comfortable; she will live with us, of course, and she is welcome to everything I have got; and I love you. That is the one great drawback, isn't it? The question is. Will you be able to put up with it?"

Away in the back of Mabel's mind another voice whispered, "I love you." She had to shut her lids over the "Dream Eyes," to hold back the tears.

"Even if things were different," she said, "I could not love you; I have always loved someone else."

Mr. Jarvis sat back in his chair with a quick frown. "Any chance of his marrying you?" he asked.

"No," she had to admit, "there has never been any chance of that."

"I see"—he looked up at her and down again at his podgy, fat hands, clenched together. "My offer still holds good," he said abruptly.

"Oh, I don't know what to say or what to do." Mabel's calm broke, she stood up nervously. It almost seemed as if the walls of the room were closing in on her. "There are so many things to think of; Mother and Dick and——"

Perhaps he understood the softening of her voice as she spoke of Dick, for he looked up at her quickly.

"Yes, there is your brother," he agreed. "I guess he is pretty tired having to look after you two, and he is a clever lad; there ought to be a future before him if he has his chance. Put the weight on to my shoulders, Mabel; they are better able to bear it."

She turned to him breathlessly; it was quite true what he was saying about Dick. Dick had his own life to make. "I have told you the truth," she said. "I don't love you, probably there will be times when I shall hate you. If you are not afraid of that, if you are ready to take Mother and me and let us spend your money in return for that, then—I will marry you."

Mr. Jarvis got quickly to his feet. "You mean it?" he gasped; his face was almost purple, he came to her, catching her hands in his. "You mean it? Mind you, Mabel, you have got to put up with my loving you. I am not pretending that I am the kind of man who will leave you alone."

"I mean it," she answered, very cold and quiet, because it seemed as if all the tears in her heart had suddenly hardened into a lump of stone.



CHAPTER VII

"I ride to a tourney with sordid things, They grant no quarter, but what care I?

* * * * *

I have bartered and begged, I have cheated and lied, But now, however the battle betide, Uncowed by the clamour, I ride ride, ride!"

VICTOR STARBUCK.

Joan did not see Aunt Janet again. Miss Abercrombie carried messages backwards and forwards between the two, but even Miss Abercrombie's level-headed arguments could not move Aunt Janet from the position she had taken up. And Miss Abercrombie was quite able to realize how much her old friend was suffering.

"I never knew a broken heart could bring so much pain," she told Joan; "but every time I look at your aunt I realize that physical suffering is as nothing compared to the torture of her thoughts."

"Why cannot she try to understand. Let me go to her," Joan pleaded. "If only I can speak to her I shall make her understand."

But Miss Abercrombie shook her head. "No, child," she said, "it would be quite useless and under the circumstances you must respect her wishes. I am fearfully sorry for both of you; I know that it is hurting you, too, but when you have wilfully or inadvertently killed a person's belief in you the only thing you can do is to keep out of their way. Time is the one healer for such wounds."

The tears smarted in Joan's eyes, yet up till now she had not cried once. Hurt pride, hurt love, struggled for expression, but words seemed so useless.

"I had better hurry up and get away," she said; "I suppose Aunt Janet hates the thought of my being near her even."

Miss Abercrombie watched her with kindly eyes. The tragedy she had suspected on the first night was worse even than she had imagined. It stared at her out of the old, fierce face upstairs, it slipped into her thoughts of what this girl's future was going to be.

"Have you made any plans?" she asked; "do you know at all where to go?"

"Does it matter very much?" Joan answered bitterly.

"My dear," Miss Abercrombie spoke gently, "I am making no attempt to criticize, and I certainly have no right to judge, but you have a very hard fight before you and you will not win through if you go into it in that spirit. I do not want to ask questions, you would probably resent them, but will you tell me one thing. Does the man know about what is going to happen?"

"No," answered Joan. "It wouldn't make any difference if he did. It is not even as if he had persuaded me to go and live with him; I want you to understand that I went of my own free will because I thought it was right."

"You will write and tell him," suggested Miss Abercrombie. "That is only fair to him and yourself."

"No," Joan said again, "it was the one thing he was most afraid of; I would not stoop to ask him to share it with me."

Miss Abercrombie put out a quick hand. "You are forgetting that now there is someone else who is dependent on how you fight and whether you win through. You may say, 'I stand alone in this,' yet there is someone else who will have to share in paying the cost."

The colour swept from Joan's cheek; she choked back the hard lump in her throat. "We will have to pay it together," she said. "I cannot ask anyone else to help."

The tears, long held back, came then and she turned away quickly. Miss Abercrombie watched her in silence for a minute or two. At last she spoke. "You poor thing," she said slowly and quietly; "you poor, foolish child."

Joan turned to her quickly. "You are thinking that I am a coward," she said, "that I am making but a poor beginnings to my fight. But it isn't that, not exactly. I shall have courage enough when it comes to the time. But just now it is hurting me so to hurt Aunt Janet; I had not reckoned on that, I did not know that you could kill love so quickly."

"You can't," Miss Abercrombie answered. "If her love were dead all this would not be hurting her any more."

So Joan packed up her trunks again, fighting all the time against the impulse which prompted her to do nothing but cry and cry and cry. The chill of Aunt Janet's attitude seemed to have descended on the whole household. They could have no idea of the real trouble, but they felt the shadow and moved about limply, talking to each other in whispers. Miss Janet was reputed to be ill, anyway, she was keeping her room, and Miss Joan was packing up to go away; two facts which did not work in well together. No wonder the servants were restless and unhappy.

Uncle John met Joan on her way upstairs late that evening. His usually grave, uninterested face wore an expression of absolute amazement, it almost amounted to fear.

"Will you come into my room for a minute," he said, holding the door open for her to pass.

Once inside, he turned and stared at her; she had never imagined his face could have worn such an expression. She saw him trying to speak, groping for words, as it were, and she stayed tongue-tied before him. Her day had been so tumultuous that now she was tired out, indifferent as to what might happen next.

"Your aunt has told me," he said at last. "I find it almost impossible to believe, and in a way I blame myself. We should never have allowed you to go away as we did." He paused to breathe heavily. "I am an old man, but not too old to make a fight for our honour. Will you give me this man's name and address, Joan?"

She had not paused to think that they would look on it as their honour which she had played with. His rather pitiful dignity hurt her more than anything that had gone before.

"I cannot do that," she answered; "there is nothing exactly that you could blame him for. I did what I did out of my own free will and because I thought it was right."

He still stared at her. "Right," he repeated; "you use the word in a strange sense, surely; and as for blaming him"—she saw how suddenly his hands clenched, the knuckles standing out white—"if you will let me know where to find him, I will settle that between us."

Joan moved towards the door. "I cannot," she said; "please, Uncle John, don't ask me any more. I have hurt your honour; it must be me that you punish. I am going away to-morrow, let me go out of your life altogether. I shall not make any attempt to come back."

"You are going to him?" he questioned. "Before God, if you do that I will find you out and——"

"No," she interrupted, "you need not be afraid; I am not going back to him."

With her hand on the door she heard him order her to come back as he had not finished what he had to say, and she stayed where she was, not turning again to look at him.

"You are being stubborn in your sin." How strange the words sounded from Uncle John, who had never said a cross word to her in his life. "Very well, then, there is nothing for us to do except, as you say, to try and forget that we have ever loved you. When you go out of our house to-morrow it shall be the end. Your aunt is with me in this. But you shall have money; it shall be paid to you regularly through my solicitor, and to-night I am writing to him to tell him to render you every assistance he can. You can go there whenever you are in need of help. Miss Abercrombie has also promised your aunt, I believe, to do what she can for you."

"I would rather not take any money from you," whispered Joan; "I will be able to earn enough to keep myself."

"When you are doing that," he answered grimly, "you may communicate with the solicitor and he will put the money aside for such time as you may need it. But until then you owe it to us to use our money in preference to what could only be given to you in charity or disgrace."

She waited in silence for some minutes after his last words. If she could have run to him then and cried out her fear and dismay and regret, perhaps some peace might have been achieved between them which would have helped to smooth out the tangle of their lives. But Joan was hopelessly dumb. She had gone into her escapade with light laughter on her lips, now she was paying the cost. One cannot take the world and readjust it to one's own beliefs. That was the lesson she was to learn through loneliness and tears. This breaking of home ties was only the first step in the lesson.

She stole out of his presence at last and up to her own room. Her packing was all finished, she had dismantled the walls of her pictures, the tables of her books. Everything she possessed had been given to her by either Uncle John or Aunt Janet. Christmas presents, Easter presents, birthday presents, presents for no particular excuse except that she was their little girl and they loved her. It seemed to Joan as if into the black box which contained all these treasures she had laid away also their love for her. It took on almost the appearance of a coffin and she hated it.

Miss Abercrombie saw her off at the station next morning. She had given Joan several addresses where she could look for rooms and was coming up to London in about a month herself, and would take Joan back with her into the country. "I want you to remember, though," she added, "that you can always come to me any time before that if you feel inclined. You need not even write; just turn up; you have my address; I shall always be glad to have you. I want to help you through what I know is going to be a very bitter time."

"Thank you," Joan answered; but even at the time she had a ridiculous feeling that Miss Abercrombie was very glad to be seeing the last of her.

After the train had slid out of the station and the small, purposeful figure had vanished from sight she sat back and tried to collect her thoughts to review the situation. She was feeling tired and desperately unhappy. They had let her see, even these dear people whom of all others in the world she loved, that she had gone outside their pale. She was in their eyes an outcast, a leper. She was afraid to see in other people's eyes the look of horror and agony which she had read in Aunt Janet's. Of what use was her book-learned wisdom in the face of this, it vanished into thin air. Hopeless, ashamed, yet a little defiant, Joan sat and stared at the opposite wall of the railway carriage.

At Victoria Station she put her luggage into the cloak-room, deciding to see what could be done in the way of rooms, without the expense of going from place to place in a cab. The places Miss Abercrombie had recommended her to struck her as being expensive, and it seemed to her tortured nerves as if the landladies viewed her with distrustful eyes. She finally decided to take a bus down to Chelsea; she remembered having heard from someone that Chelsea was a cheap and frankly Bohemian place to live in.

London was not looking its very best on this particular morning. A green-grey fog enshrouded shops and houses, the Park was an invisible blur and the atmosphere smarted in people's eyes and irritated their throats. Despite the contrariness of the weather, Joan clambered on to the top of the bus, she felt she could not face the inside stuffiness. She was tired and, had she but owned to it, hungry. It was already late afternoon and she had only had a cup of coffee and a bun since her arrival.

As the bus jolted and bumped down Park Lane and then along Knightsbridge, she sat huddled up and miserable on the back seat, the day being well in accord with her mood. She was only dimly aware that they were passing the flat where she and Gilbert had lived, she was more acutely conscious of the couple who sat just in front of her—the man's arm flung round the girl's shoulders, her head very close to his.

Waves of misery closed round Joan. A memory, which had not troubled her for some time, of Gilbert's hands about her and the scent of heliotrope, stirred across her mind. She could feel the hot tears splashing on her ungloved hands, a fit of sobbing gulped at her throat. Lest she should altogether lose control of herself she rose quickly and fumbled her way down the steps. The bus had just reached the corner of Sloane Street. She would go across the Park, she decided, and have her cry out. It was no use going to look for rooms in her present state, no landlady would dream of having her.

Half blinded by her tears and the fog combined, she turned and started to cross the road. Voices yelled at her from either side, a motor car with enormous headlights came straight at her out of the fog. Joan hesitated, if she had stayed quite still the danger would have flashed past her, but she was already too unnerved to judge of what her action should be. As if fascinated by the lights she shut her eyes and moved blindly towards them.

There were more sharp shouts, a great grinding noise of brakes and rushing wheels brought to a sudden pause, then the darkness of black, absolute night surged over and beyond the pain which for a moment had held Joan. She floated out, so it seemed, on to a sea of nothingness, and a great peace settled about her heart.



CHAPTER VIII

"With heart made empty of delight And hands that held no more fair things; I questioned her;—'What shall requite The savour of my offerings?'"

E. NESBIT.

"You have got your back against the wall, you have got to fight, you have got to fight, to fight!"

The words pounded across Joan's mind over and over again. She struggled in obedience to their message against the waves of sleep that lapped her round. Struggled and fought, till at last, after what seemed like centuries of darkness, she won back to light and opened her eyes.

She was lying in a long narrow bed, one of many, ranged on both sides down the hospital walls. Large windows, set very high up, opened on to grey skies and a flood of rather cold sunshine. At the foot of her bed, watching her with impartial eyes, stood a man, and beside him two nurses, their neat pink dresses and starched aprons rustling a little as they moved.

Joan's eyes, wide and bewildered, met the doctor's, and he leant forward and smiled.

"That's better," he said, "you have got to make an effort towards living yourself, young lady." He nodded and turned to the nurse at his right hand. "How long has she been in now, Nurse?"

"Ten days to-morrow," the woman answered, "and except for the first day, when she moaned a good deal and talked about having to fight, she has scarce seemed to be conscious."

Joan's lips, prompted by the insistent voice within her, repeated, "I have got to fight," stiffly.

The doctor came a little nearer and stooped to hear the words, "Yes," he agreed, "that is right, you have got to fight. See if you can get her to talk now and again, Nurse," he added; "she wants rousing, otherwise there is nothing radically to keep her back."

Joan's face, however, seemed to linger in his mind, for, as he was about to leave the ward after his tour of inspection, he turned again to the elder nurse in charge.

"Have you been able to find out anything about bed 14?" he asked.

"No, sir. We have had no inquiries and there was nothing in any of her pockets except a cloak-room ticket for Victoria Station."

"Humph," he commented, "yet she must have relations. She does not look the friendless waif type."

Nurse Taylor pursed up her lips. She had her own opinion as to the patient in bed 14. "There was the unfortunate circumstance of her condition," she mentioned; "the girl may very well have been desperate and lonely."

"Anyway, she hasn't any right to be left like this," the doctor retorted. "If you can get her to talk about relations, find out where they are and send for them. That is my advice."

Nurse Taylor owned a great many excellent qualities; tact and compassion were not among them. Long years spent in a profession which brought her daily into contact with human sin and human suffering had done nothing to soften her outlook or smooth down the hard, straight lines which she had laid down for her own and everyone else's guidance. She disapproved of Joan, but obedience to the doctor's orders was a religion to her; even where she disapproved she always implicitly carried them out.

Next day, therefore, she stopped for quite a long time at Joan's bed, talking in her toneless, high voice. Had Joan any people who could be written to, what was her home address, would they not be worried at hearing nothing from her?

Joan could only shake her head to all the questions. Very vaguely and in detached fragments she was beginning to remember the time that had preceded her accident. The memory of Aunt Janet's face and Uncle John's parting words was like an open wound, it bled at every touch and she shrank from Nurse Taylor's pointed questions. She remembered how she had sat on the top of the bus with the black weight of misery on her heart and of how the tears had come. She had been looking for rooms; that recollection followed hard on the heels of the other.

When she was well enough to get about she would have to start looking for rooms again, for she had quite definitely made up her mind not to be a burden to Miss Abercrombie. It was her own fight; when she had gathered her strength about her, she would fight it out alone and make a success of it. Half wistfully she looked into the future and dreamt about the baby that was coming into her life. She would have to learn to live down this feeling of shame that burnt at her heart as she thought of him. He would be all hers, a small life to make of it what she pleased. Well, she would have to see that she made it fine and gay and brave. Shame should not enter into their lives, not if she fought hard enough.

Nurse Taylor described her to the junior afterwards as a most stubborn and hardened type of girl.

"The poor thing has hardly got her wits about her yet," the other answered; "she is very little trouble in the wards, we have had worse."

"Well, the doctor can question her himself next time," Nurse Taylor snorted. "I am not here to be snubbed by her sort."

She did not, however, let the matter drop entirely. At the end of her third week Joan was promoted to an armchair in the verandah and there one afternoon, after the teas had been handed round, Nurse Taylor brought her a visitor. A tall, sad-faced, elderly woman, who walked with a curiously deprecating movement, seeming to apologize for every step she took. Yet kindliness and a certain strength shone at Joan from behind the large, round-rimmed glasses she wore, and her mouth was clean cut and sharp.

"This is Mrs. Westwood." Nurse Taylor introduced them briefly. "She wants to have a little talk with you, Miss Rutherford. If I were you I should tell her about things," she added pointedly. "I do not know if you have any plans made, but you are up for discharge next week."

She bustled off and Mrs. Westwood drew up a chair and sat down close to Joan, staring at the girl with short-sighted, pink-lidded eyes.

"You will wonder who I am," she said at last. "Perhaps you have never noticed me before, but I am a very frequent visitor. We run a mission in the South-West of London, with the object of helping young girls. I want you to talk to me about yourself, to be quite frank with me and to remember, if I seem to usurp on your privacy, that I am an older woman and that my only wish is to help you."

"It is very kind of you," began Joan, "but——"

"You may not need material help," the woman put in hastily; "but, spiritually, who is not in need of help from God."

Joan could think of no suitable reply for this and they sat in silence, the woman studying her face intently. Then presently, flushing with the earnestness of her purpose, she put out a cold hand and took Joan's.

"I think they have left it to me to tell you," she said. "The little life that was within you has been killed by your accident."

The colour flamed to Joan's face. A sense of awe and a feeling of intense relief surged up in her. "Oh, what a good thing!" she gasped, almost before she realized what she said.

Mrs. Westwood sat back in her chair, her eyes no longer looked at Joan. "The child which God had given you even in your sin," she said stiffly.

Joan leaned forward quickly. "I did not mean just that," she said, "and yet I did. You do not know, you can't guess, how afraid I was getting. Everyone's hand against me, and even the people who had most loved me seeming to hate me because of this."

Her voice trailed into silence before the stern disapproval of the other woman's face. Yet once having started, she was driven on to speak all the jumble of thoughts that had lain in her mind these last two months.

"I was not ashamed or afraid, to begin with," she hurried the words out. "It had not seemed to me wrong. I lived with him because I thought I loved him and we did not want to get married. Then one day he let me see—oh, no, I am not being quite truthful, for I had seen it before—that he was in reality ashamed of our life together. He was acting against his convictions because it amused him. I could not bear that, it seemed to drag our life together through the mud, and I left him."

She could see that Mrs. Westwood was not making the slightest attempt to understand her; still she went wildly on:

"I went home and it seemed all right. My life with him faded away; I suppose I had never really loved him. Then, then they found out about what was going to happen and they turned against me, even Aunt Janet;" her voice broke on the words, she buried her face in her arms, crying like a child. "Aunt Janet, Aunt Janet," she whispered again and again through her tears.

Mrs. Westwood waited till the storm had spent itself, there was no sign of softening upon her face. Remorse and regret she could understand and condone, but this excusing of self, as she called Joan's explanation, struck her as being inexcusably bad.

"And do you now congratulate yourself that by this accident," she laid special stress on the word, "you are to escape the punishment of your sin?"

Joan raised tear-drowned eyes. "Haven't I been punished enough," she asked, "for something that I did not think was a sin?"

"We cannot make or unmake God's laws in our thoughts," the other answered; "you were wilfully blind to the knowledge that was in your heart."

"Oh, no," Joan began. Mrs. Westwood swept the remark aside and stood up.

"We will not argue about it," she said; "I realize that you are not yet looking for the comfort or promise of pardon which I could lead you to. But, my child, do not delude yourself into the belief that thus easily have you set aside the consequences of your evil. God is not mocked, neither does He sleep. If you should ever be in any real need of help," she ended abruptly, "help which would serve to make you strong in the face of temptation, come to us, our doors are always open."

She dropped a card bearing the address of the mission on Joan's lap and turned to go. Joan saw her call Nurse Taylor and say a few words to her on the way out. For herself she sat on in the dusk. Outside the lamps had been lit, they shone on wet pavements and huge, lurching omnibuses, on fast-driven taxis and a policeman standing alone in the middle of the road. To-morrow she would have to write to Miss Abercrombie and tell her there was no further need for her very kindly assistance; then she would have to make new plans and arrangements for herself in the future. She would try for a room in one of the girls' clubs that Miss Abercrombie had given her a letter to. She had been shy of going there before, but it would be different now. She could slip back into life and take up her share, forgetting, since the fear was past, the nightmare of terror which had held her heart before. For she had been afraid, what was the use of trying to blind her eyes to the truth? She had not had the courage of her convictions, she had not even wanted to carry her banner through the fight. She was glad, to the very bottom of her heart she was glad, that there was no more need for fighting.



CHAPTER IX

"Let this be said between us here, One's love grows green when one turns grey; This year knows nothing of last year, To-morrow has no more to say To yesterday."

A. SWINBURNE.

Dick could not bring himself to approve of his sister's marriage. He made no attempt to conceal his real opinion on the subject. In one very heated interview with Mabel herself he labelled it as disgusting to marry a man whom you disliked for his money, or for the things his money can give you.

"But I do not dislike him," Mabel answered, as once before. She was sitting in a low armchair by the window, a piece of sewing in her hands. She laid her work down to look up at him. "He is very fond of me and he will be very good to Mother and myself. There are worse reasons than that for marrying, surely."

"It is Mother, then," stormed Dick. "You are doing it because of Mother."

Mabel shook her head. "No," she said; "I am doing it because to me it seems right and as if it would bring most happiness to all of us. I am not even quite sure that Mother approves."

She need not have had any misgivings on that point. Mrs. Grant was absolutely in her element arranging for the marriage. Mabel had never been quite the beautiful daughter that Mrs. Grant would have liked, that she should marry a Mr. Jarvis was to be expected; he had at least got money, which was always something to be thankful for. She took over the refurnishing and redecorating of his house with eager hands.

"Mabel has always been accustomed to luxury, Tom," she told Mr. Jarvis; "until Harry died she never wanted for a thing which money could give her."

"And she shall not want now," he answered gravely.

Only once he remarked to Mabel afterwards, showing perhaps the trend of his thoughts: "We appear to be furnishing our house to please your mother, Mabel; seems a pity I cannot save you the trouble of marrying me by asking her instead."

Mabel stirred a little uneasily. "In pleasing her you are pleasing me," she answered, and with a shrug of his shoulders he turned away from the subject.

Mrs. Grant had her own rooms papered with white satin paper and very delicately outlined in gold; she ransacked the Jarvis heirlooms to find appropriate furniture for such a setting, and succeeded very well. The bills for her various suggested improvements passed through Mr. Jarvis' hands, and he commented on them to Mabel with a grim smile.

"She knows how to spend money," he said. "Dick must certainly have found the responsibility heavy."

"She has never learned how not to spend," Mabel explained; "but you must not pass what you think unnecessary."

"My dear, it is part of our bargain," he answered; "I shall not shrink from my share any more than you will."

Mrs. Grant fought very strenuously for a wedding in London, but here for once Mabel opposed her firmly, and the idea had to be abandoned.

"It means, of course, that most of my dearest friends will not be able to come, but I suppose I need not expect that to weigh against your determination," was one of the many arguments she tried, and: "I never dreamed that a daughter of mine would insist upon this hole-and-corner way of getting married" another.

"It almost looks as if you were ashamed of the man," she said somewhat spitefully to Mabel, the day the wedding-dress was tried on. "When your father and I were married the church was simply packed. I had a lovely gown"—her thoughts wandered into kindlier channels—"and Harry was very much in love. I remember his hand shaking as he tried to slip the ring on to my finger. I suppose you love Mr. Jarvis?"

The abrupt question coming after the vague memories startled Mabel into sudden rigidness. "I suppose I do," she answered, her white-clad figure mocked her from the glass. "One does love one's husband, doesn't one?"

"Mabel"—Mrs. Grant's voice sounded righteous indignation—"you do say such extraordinary things sometimes and about such solemn subjects. But if you do really love him, then why this desire for secrecy?"

"Dear Mother, being married in the parish church instead of in St. Paul's is not exactly secrecy or a wild desire to hide something on my part. I have always hated big fashionable weddings."

She slipped out of the dress and laid it down on the bed. Mrs. Grant viewed her with discontented eyes.

"I cannot pretend to understand you," she grumbled, "and I don't know why you talk of St. Paul's. I never suggested such a place; Harry and I were married at St. Mary's, Kensington."

Dick, when consulted on the matter, proved even less amenable. "I dislike the whole affair," he answered gruffly; "please don't ask me where it should take place."

He ran up to London himself the week before the wedding. A vague and rather incoherent wish to meet Joan again had kept him restless ever since her abrupt departure. He did not attempt to define his thoughts in any way. The girl had interested him, and startled him out of the even tenor of his beliefs. He hated to think of her turned adrift and left, as the possibility was she had been left, to fend for herself. He had not seen the elder Miss Rutherford since his visit, but rumour in the village ran that Miss Joan had got into disgrace of sorts and been sent away. The servants from the Manor spoke with bated breath of the change which had come over the household; of how Miss Joan's rooms had been locked and her pictures taken down. The world is horribly hard to women when they leave the beaten paths of respectability; he could not bear to think of what she might be suffering, of where it might lead her.

He walked about somewhat aimlessly for his few days in town, but the chance of meeting anyone in this way is very remote, and of course he did not succeed. He could not, however, shake away the depression which the thought of her brought him.

Mabel came to sit in his smoking-room the night before her wedding, Mrs. Grant having gone early to bed.

"Did you see anyone up in town?" she asked.

Dick shook his head, puffing at his pipe. "Not a soul I knew," he commented, "except Mathews about my job. Wish I hadn't gone; London is a depressing place."

"You rather hoped to meet someone, didn't you?" asked Mabel.

Dick glanced up at her and away again quickly. "What makes you ask that?" he said.

Mabel let the curtain fall back into place; she had been peering out into the street, and turned to face him. "You have shut me outside things, Dick," she spoke slowly, "this last month, ever since my engagement; but shutting me out can't keep me from knowing. You only saw that girl over at the Manor once, but she has been in your thoughts ever since." She came forward, perching herself on the arm of his chair as had been her habit in the old days, one arm thrown round his shoulders to support herself. "Little brother," she asked, "did you think I should not know when you fell in love?"

Fell in love! How completely the thought startled him. Of course Mabel was utterly mistaken in her wild conjectures. To throw aside the doubt he turned quickly, and put a hand over hers where it lay near him.

"Why do you say I have shut you out?" he parried her question. "Because I lost my temper over your engagement?"

"No." Mabel shook her head. "It was not exactly because of that. I know you have not understood, Dick; I am not even sure that I want you to; and I know that that helped to build a wall between us, but that was not what began it. Never mind"—she bent and kissed the top of his head—"if your secret is not ready to share you shall keep it a little longer to yourself. You will go up to London, won't you, Dick, after Tom and I have come back and Mother has settled down?"

"I suppose so," he agreed; "but I want to get away for a bit first, if I can. Spoke to Mathews when I was in town and he has promised to keep his eyes open for a job on one of those P. and O. liners for me."

"I see," she said; "but when you come back you will settle in town and sometimes you will spare us week-ends from your very strenuous career, won't you?"

"Of course," he answered; his hand tightened on hers. "Mabel," he said suddenly, "you are happy, aren't you; it isn't because of me or anyone else that you are getting married, is it?"

He was not looking at her, therefore she did not have to lie with her eyes. "I am quite happy," she answered softly. "Dear, stupid Dick, how you have fretted your heart out about my happiness."

"I know," he admitted, "I could not bear to think—I mean, love somehow stands for such a lot in people's lives, I——" he broke off, and stood up abruptly. "You will think I am a sentimental ass, but I have always wanted you to have the best of things, Mabel, and I have been horribly afraid that Fate, or Mother, or perhaps even I, were shoving you into taking the second best."

"You have wanted the best for me, Dick," she answered, "that counts for a lot."

Then one of those dull silences fell between them that come sometimes to two people who love with their whole hearts and who have been trying to speak some of their thoughts to each other—a silence that stood between them almost as it were with a drawn sword, while Dick puffed at his pipe and Mabel stared at her white hands, showing up against the darkness of her dress. Then finally she moved, standing up, and just for a second their eyes met.

"Good-night," she said across the silence, "it is late, Dick, I meant to be in bed ages ago."

"Good-night," he answered, and she turned quickly and went from the room.

Mrs. Grant kept everyone, including herself, in a state of unexplained fuss from the moment when early morning light woke her on the day of Mabel's marriage till the moment when, much to Dick's embarrassment, she collapsed into his arms, sobbing bitterly, in the vestry where they had all gone to sign their names.

At the reception she slightly recovered her spirits, but broke down again when the time came for the couple to depart. They were going to Paris for a fortnight's honey-moon; Mabel had stipulated that they should not be away for longer than that. Jarvis Hall was ready for their return; already Mrs. Grant was using one of the motors and ordering crested paper with the address on it for her own letters. But Dick, Mabel knew, was simply aching to be quit of it all, and away on his own. He had arranged to hand over the practice and proposed to take a two years' trip abroad. It was only in the complete freedom of Dick that she would know that part of her plan was being fulfilled.

When she drew back her head after the final farewells had been waved and the house was out of sight it was to meet Jarvis' intent, short-sighted stare. His glasses magnified the pupils of his eyes to an unusual extent when he was looking straight at anyone.

"Well," he said, "that's done. Till the last moment, Mabel, I rather wondered if you would go through with it. But I might have known," he went on quickly, "you are not the sort to shrink from a bargain once it is made."

Her hand lay passive in his, she did not even stir when he leaned forward to kiss her. What he had said was perfectly true, the bargain had been made, she was not one of those who shirk payment.



CHAPTER X

"And you shall learn how salt his food who fares Upon another's bread; how steep his path, Who treadeth up and down another's stairs."

D. G. ROSSETTI.

There are some natures which cannot live with any happiness in drab surroundings. Atmosphere affects everyone more or less; but whereas there are a few fortunate ones who can rise triumphant to a certain contentment through squalor and ugliness, there are a great many more who find even cheerfulness very hard to attain to under like circumstances.

The shut-in dinginess of Digby Street, the gloomy aspect of Shamrock House, cast such a chill across Joan's spirits that, as she stood hesitating with her hand on the bell, the instinct came to her to scramble back into the cab and tell the man to drive her anywhere away from such a neighbourhood. Of course it was absurd, and the cabman did not look as if he would be in the least willing to comply. He had treated her with a supercilious disbelief in there being any tip for him as soon as he had heard of her destination. Joan had gone to Victoria Station to collect her luggage, and it had been both late and dark before the need for a cab had arisen. She had elected not to leave the hospital till after tea; somehow, when it had come near to going, her courage, which she had been bolstering up with hope and promises of what she should do in her new life, had vanished into thin air. Perhaps more than anything else she lacked the physical strength which would have enabled her to look cheerfully into the future. The hospital had been a place of refuge, she hated to leave it.

This feeling grew upon her more and more as she sat back in a corner of the cab while it rumbled along the Vauxhall Bridge Road. There seemed always to be a tram passing, huge giant vehicles that shook the earth and made a great deal of noise in their going. The houses on either side were dingy, singularly unattractive-looking buildings, and the further the cab crawled away from Victoria Street the deeper the shade of poverty and dirt that descended on the surroundings. Digby Street and Shamrock House were the culminating stroke to Joan's depression.

Miss Abercrombie had written recommending it to her as a Girls' Club where she would probably get companionship and advice on the question of work. "You won't like it," she had added, "but it is very conveniently situated and ridiculously cheap." So Joan had described her destination to the cabman as a ladies' club, somewhere in Digby Street. He had answered with a sniff, for it was here that he had lost sight of his tip, that he supposed she meant the Home for Working Girls that lay in those parts. Looking up at the large, red-fronted building, with its countless uncurtained windows, Joan realized that the man's description was probably nearer the truth than her own.

She was to learn later that on this particular occasion she saw Digby Street at its very worst, for it was Saturday night, and barrows of fish, meat and vegetables stood along the pavements, illuminated by flares of light so that all the ugliness was only too apparent. Little children played in and out, under the barrows and along the gutters; a public-house stood at the corner near Shamrock House, and exactly opposite the Salvation Army added its brass band and shrill voices to the general tumult.

Joan's first timid attempt at the bell produced no answer, nor her second. By this time the cabman had dismounted her box and stood staring at her in sullen disapproval, while a couple of very drunk but cheerful costers argued with each other as to whether they ought not to help the young lady to get in. Her third effort was perhaps more violent, for, to her relief, she could see the dim light in the hall being turned up and the door was opened on the chain and very slightly ajar. A couple of bright eyes peered at her through this opening, then, having apparently satisfied their owner that Joan was neither dangerous nor drunk, the door was further opened, and Joan could see into the red-tiled hall and passage with its numbered, white-painted doors.

"What do you want?" asked the lady of the eyes; a small, plump person with grey hair brushed back very straight from an apple-red face.

"I want a room," Joan explained. "I have been recommended to come here. I do hope you have one to spare."

The little lady moved aside and beckoned to the cabman. "You can come in," she said, "and the man had better fetch in your box. I thought it was one of those troublesome children when you first rang, it was so very violent, and they make a point of trying to break the bells."

"I am so sorry," Joan murmured meekly, an apology she realized was expected from her. "I was so dreadfully tired and no one seemed to be going to answer."

"We do not keep a staff of servants to answer the bell day and night," the woman answered. "Still, I am sorry you were kept waiting. Will you come in here"—she opened a door a little way down the passage—"this is my office. I must see your letter of recommendation before I let you talk about the rooms, that is one of our rules."

Joan paid the cabman and followed her inquisitor into the office. Miss Nigel let down the front of the desk, opened a large ledger and donned a pair of spectacles. "Now," she said, "who are you, what are your references, and who recommended you?"

Fortunately Miss Abercrombie had remembered to send a letter of introduction. Joan produced it and handed it to Miss Nigel. "My name is Joan Rutherford," she added; "I did not know about having to have references."

Miss Nigel peered at her over the tops of her glasses; she only used them for reading and could not see out of them for other purposes. "We have to make a point of it in most cases," she answered, "but also I judge by appearances. In your case this letter from Miss Abercrombie—her name is in our books although I do not know her personally—will be quite sufficient. Now, how much do you want to pay?"

"As little as possible," Joan confessed, "only I would like to have a room to myself."

"Quite so," the other agreed, "and in any case, all our cubicles are taken. They are, of course, cheaper than anything else." She ran her finger down the lines of the ledger. "I can let you have a room on the top floor which will work out to fifteen and six a week. That includes breakfast, late dinner, lights and baths. There is a certain amount of attendance, but we expect the girls to make their own beds and keep the rooms tidy."

Fifteen and six a week. Joan attempted to make a rapid calculation in her head, but gave up the idea. It sounded at least quite absurdly cheap, she would not have to spend very much of Uncle John's allowance before she got some work to do for herself. The future seemed suddenly to shut her in to a life enclosed by the brick walls of Shamrock House with its attendant neighbourhood of Digby Street.

"That will do," she answered, "it sounds very nice."

"Yes," agreed Miss Nigel; she closed the desk and stood up, "for the price, we offer exceptional advantages. If you will carry up what you need for to-night, I will show you to your rooms."

It occurred to Joan as she followed her guide up flights of carpetless stone stairs that her new abode resembled a prison more than anything else. The long bare passages were broken up by countless doors all numbered and painted white in contrast to the brick-coloured walls. The sound of their footsteps echoed mournfully through the bareness and seeming desolation of the place. From one of the landing windows she caught a blurred picture of the streets outside, the lit-up barrows, the crowd just emerging from the public-house. She was to get very used and very hardened to the life in Digby Street, but on this, her first evening, it caught at her senses with a cold touch of fear.

On the top floor of all Miss Nigel opened the first door along the passage and ushered Joan into the room that was to be hers. It was so small that its one window occupied practically the whole space of the front wall. A narrow bed stood along one side, and between this and the opposite wall there was scarce room for a chair. At the foot of the bed stood the wash-stand and the chest of drawers facing each other, with a very narrow space in between them. But it was all scrupulously clean, with white-washed walls and well-scrubbed furniture, and the windows opened over the roofs of the neighbouring houses. Very far up in the darkness of the sky outside a star twinkled and danced.

Miss Nigel looked round at the room with evident satisfaction. "You will be comfortable here, I think," she said; "we do our best to make the girls happy. We expect them, however, to conform to our rules; you will find them explained in this book." She placed a little blue pamphlet on the dressing-table. "Lights are put out at ten, and if you are later than that, you have to pay a small fine for being let in, a threepenny door fee, we call it. Everyone is requested to make as little noise as possible in their rooms or along the passages, and to be punctual for dinner."

With one more look round she turned to go. Half-way out, however, a kindly thought struck her, and she looked back at Joan.

"Dinner is at seven-thirty," she said. "I expect you will be glad to have it and get to bed. You look very tired."

Joan would have liked to ask if she could have dinner upstairs, but one glance at the book of rules and regulations decided her against the idea. Shamrock House evidently admitted of no such luxury, and on second thoughts, how ridiculous it was to suppose that dinner could be carried up five flights of stairs for the benefit of someone paying fifteen and six a week all told. She was too tired and too depressed to face the prospect of a meal downstairs, she would just have to go to bed without dinner, she concluded.

The House woke to life as she lay there, evidently the inhabitants returned about this time. Joan remembered the cabman's somewhat blunt description and smiled at the memory. A Home for Working Girls. That was why it had seemed so silent and deserted before, shops and offices do not shut till after six. But now the workers were coming home, she could hear their feet along the passages, the slamming of doors, voices and laughter from the room next hers. Home! This narrow, cold room, those endless stairs and passages outside, they were to be home for the future. The hot tears pricked in her eyes, but she fought against tears. After all, she had been very lucky to find it, it was cheap, it was clean; other girls lived here and were happy, someone had laughed next door.

"I have got to take you firmly in hand," Joan argued with her depression. "It is no use making a fuss about things that are all my own fault. I tried to play with life and I did not succeed. It is too big and hard. If I had wanted to work it out differently I ought to have been very strong. But I am not strong, I am only just ordinary. This is my chance again, and in the plain, straight way I must win through." She spoke the words almost aloud, as if challenging fate: "I will win through."



CHAPTER XI

"Will my strength last me? Did not someone say The way was ever easier all the way?"

H. C. BEECHING.

Youth can nearly always rely upon sleep to build up new strength, new hope, new courage. If you have got to a stage in your life when sleep fails you, if night means merely a long tortured pause from the noises of the world, in which the beating of your heart seems unbearably loud, then indeed you have reached to the uttermost edge of despair. Joan slept, heavily and dreamlessly, save that there was some vague hint of happiness in her mind, till she was wakened in the morning by a most violent bell ringing. The dressing-bell at Shamrock House, which went at seven o'clock, was carried by a maid up and down every passage, so that there was not the slightest chance of anyone oversleeping themselves.

Joan dressed quickly; the faint aroma of happiness which her sleep had brought her, and which amounted to cheerfulness, stayed with her. She remembered how Miss Abercrombie had once said to her: "Oh, you are a Browningite," and smiled at the phrase, repeating to herself another verse of the same poem:

"And I shall thereupon Take rest ere I be gone, Once more on my adventure brave and new."

She felt almost confident of success this morning; her mind was busy with plans of the work she would find. She was glad to feel herself one in a giant hive of workers, all girls like herself, cutting out their lives for themselves, earning their own living.

Breakfast brought with it a slight disillusionment. The dining-room in Shamrock House is in the basement; chill and dreary of aspect, its windows always dirty and unopenable, because at the slightest excuse of an open window the small boys of the neighbourhood will make it their target for all kinds of filth. Rotting vegetables, apple-cores, scrapings of mud; there is quite sufficient of all that outside the windows without encouraging it to come in. Six long deal tables occupy the space of the room, and it is one of the few amusements which the children of Digby Street possess to gather at the railings and watch the inhabitants of Shamrock House being fed.

It was the last flight of stairs into the basement which damped Joan's enthusiasm for her new home. As she stood hesitating in the doorway, for there were a great many people in the room, and the tables seemed crowded, she caught Miss Nigel's eye.

"You will find a seat over there," the lady called out to her, waving a hand in the direction of the furthest table. "Help yourself to bacon, which is on the hot case near the fire, and come here for your tea or coffee. By the way, which do you like?"

Joan asked for tea, and having secured her cup and a small piece of unappetizing bacon, she found her way over to the indicated table. A girl sat at the head of it, and since she was ensconced behind a newspaper and apparently paying no attention to anybody, Joan chose the chair next her. She felt on the sudden shy and unwilling to make friends with anyone, the chill of the room was striking into her heart.

She had presently to rouse her neighbour, however, to ask her to pass the salt, and at that the girl lifted a pair of penetrating eyes and fixed Joan with an intent stare.

"New arrival?" she asked.

"Yes," Joan admitted. "I came last night."

"Humph!" the girl commented. "Well, don't touch the jam this morning. It is peculiar to Shamrock House—plum-stones, raspberry-pips and glue." She swept the information at Joan and returned to her paper.

She was a big girl with rather a heavy face and strong, capable-looking hands. Despite her manners, which were undeniably bad, Joan would almost have described her as distinguished but for the fact that the word sounded ridiculous amid such surroundings.

"Looking for work?" the girl asked presently.

"Yes," Joan answered again, "only I am not sure what sort of work to look for, or what I should like to do."

The girl lifted her eyes to stare at her once again. "It isn't generally a case of 'like,'" she said, "more often it is necessity. In that case"—she reached out a long arm for the bread—"Fate does not as a rule give you much time in which to make up your mind; she pushes you into something which you hate like hell for the rest of your life."

"You aren't very cheerful," remonstrated Joan.

"Oh, well, I never am that," agreed the other, "nor polite. You ask Miss Nigel if you want a true estimate of my manners. But I have lived here ten years now and I have seen girls like you drift in and out by the score. The feeding or the general atmosphere doesn't agree with them, and our ranks are maintained by beings of a coarser make, as you may see for yourself."

She rose, crumpling her paper into a ball and throwing it under the table.

"My name is Rose Brent," she said. "What is yours?"

"Rutherford," Joan answered, "Joan Rutherford. I hope I shan't drift quite as quickly as you foretell," she added.

Secretarial work was what she had really made up her mind to try for, though she had not had the courage to confess as much to her breakfast companion. She had, after all, had a certain amount of training in that and hoped not to find it so very impossible to get a post as a beginner somewhere. Her first visit to the nearest registry office, however, served to show her that her very slight experience was going to be of little use to her. The registry lady was kind, sufficiently interested to appear amiable, but not at all reassuring in her views as to Joan's prospects.

"I am afraid I cannot hold out very much hope," she said, after five minutes' crisp questioning of Joan. "You have, you see, so very few qualifications, and the market is rather over-stocked with girls who can do just a little. My strong advice to you is to continue your shorthand; when you are a little more experienced in that we ought to have no difficulty in placing you. Good morning; please see that the hall door shuts properly, the latch is very weak."

Her business-like manner, the absolute efficiency which shone around her, and the crowded aspect of the waiting-room—all girls who could do just a little, Joan presumed—caused her heart to sink. Finding work was not going to be as easy as she had first supposed.

She roamed from office to office after that for several days, to be met everywhere with the same slight encouragement and frail promises to help. Finally, thoroughly discouraged, she bought papers instead, and turned to a strict perusal of their various advertisements.

One in particular caught her eye.

"Wanted a pupil shorthand typist. Tuition in return for services.—Apply Miss Bacon, 2, Baker Street, W."

It was late in the afternoon of the day before Joan found her way to Baker Street, for she had had several other places to call at and she was in addition very tired. Going from place to place in search of work had reduced her to a painful knowledge of her own absolute incompetency and the general uselessness of life. A brass plate on the door of No. 2 conveyed the information: "Miss Bacon. Fourth floor. Shorthand and Typing. Please ring and walk up."

Joan rang and followed the instructions. On the very top landing a girl stood, holding a candle in her hand, for up here there was no light of any sort. The grease dripped down her skirt and on to the floor.

"Do you want Miss Bacon?" she asked.

Joan nodded, too breathless to say anything.

The girl turned into the dim interior and threw open a door, snuffing the candle at the same time.

"If you will wait here," she said, "Miss Bacon will be with you in a minute."

Joan looked round on a moderately large, dust-smothered room. Dust, that is to say, was the first thing to strike the eye of the beholder. The windows were thick in dust, it lay on tables and chairs and on the two typewriters standing unused in a corner of the room. The room gave one the impression of being singularly uninhabited. Then the door opened and shut again, and Joan turned to face the owner.

Miss Bacon's figure, like her furniture, seemed to have taken on a coating of dust. Timid eyes looked out at Joan from behind pince-nez set rather crookedly on a thin nose. One side of her face, from eye to chin, was disfigured by an unsightly bruise. Miss Bacon dabbed a handkerchief to it continually and started explaining its presence at once.

"You may be surprised at my face"—her voice, like her eyes, was timid—"but I am short-sighted and last night stumbled on the stairs, hitting my face against the top step. It was exceedingly painful, but it is better now. What can I do for you?"

Joan murmured something sympathetic about the top step, and explained that she had come in answer to the advertisement. Miss Bacon's face fell. "I had hoped you were a client," she owned. Then she pulled forward a chair for herself and asked Joan to be seated.

It appeared that Joan would receive excellent tuition in shorthand and free use of the typewriters. If any typing work came in she would be expected to help with it, but for the rest she could devote the whole of her time to studying and practising on the machines. Miss Bacon was a little vague as to the other pupils, but Joan gathered that there was a shorthand class and two other typewriters in another room.

"My other pupils are, of course, on a different footing," Miss Bacon told her. "Generally I require a fee of at least ten guineas, but in your case, as I shall require you to do a little work for me, I shall be content to take less. That is to say, four guineas, everything included."

"There is nothing about paying in the advertisement," Joan ventured. "I am afraid it is quite impossible for me to pay that."

Miss Bacon took off her glasses and polished them with nervous hands. "I do not want to seem unreasonable," she said; "after you have worked for me you will certainly be able to obtain a well-paid post elsewhere; my pupils invariably move on in that way. I guarantee, of course, to find situations. If I could meet you in any way—supposing you paid me two guineas now and two guineas when you moved on?"

"It is awfully kind of you"—Joan hesitated on the words—"but I am afraid I can't really afford it, not even that."

Miss Bacon relinquished the idea with a heartfelt sigh. "My dear," she confided suddenly, "I know what poverty is. Shall we say one pound to begin with?—you must remember that these are very exceptional terms."

Joan thought a moment. It seemed almost certain, from what she had gleaned from the various agencies, that getting a post without training was an impossibility, and most of the training centres asked for at least twenty-five guineas. Perhaps in refusing this offer she was letting a good chance slip by her, and, though she hated to make free use of it, there was always Uncle John's money, to fall back on.

"I think I will come if you will let me do it in that way," she decided finally; "when would you like me to start?—to-morrow?"

"The sooner the better." Miss Bacon rose with a smile of almost intense relief. "I have had no one for the last fortnight and the place is getting very untidy. You will pay the first pound in advance," she added; "I hope you will bring it with you to-morrow."

She seemed painfully anxious for the money; if Joan had not been so tired she might have thought the fact suspicious. As it was she went back to Shamrock House with a lightened heart. It was not a very attractive or promising post; if she were to judge by outside appearances and by Miss Bacon's last remark her chief duties were to include those of general cleaning up and dusting. But that would be all in the day's work. Some little confidence and hope were beginning to creep back into her heart. She had secured her first post; Miss Bacon held out vague visions of the triumphs to which it might lead. Surely in time she would get away from the nightmare of the last two months; in time even Aunt Janet would forgive her, and meanwhile her foot was on the lowest rung of the ladder; work should be her world in future. She would work and fight and win. There was still, as Miss Abercrombie would have said, a banner to be carried. She would carry it now to the end.



CHAPTER XII

"Our life is spent in little things, In little cares our hearts are drowned; We move with heavy laden wings In the same narrow round."

For the first week in her new post Joan was kept very busy putting things—as Miss Bacon described it—to rights. She had also, she discovered, to run errands for Miss Bacon several times during the course of a day; to buy paper for the typewriters, to fetch Miss Bacon's lunch, on one occasion to buy some cooling lotion for Miss Bacon's bruise. Of the other pupils she saw no sign, and even the girl who had admitted her on the first night did not put in an appearance, but this Miss Bacon explained by saying that Edith was delicate and often forced to stay away through ill health.

Joan refrained from asking questions; she realized herself that she had stumbled on to something that was nearly a tragedy. The hunted look in Miss Bacon's face, the signs of poverty, the absolute lack of work told their own tale. As a running business 2, Baker Street, was an evident failure, but there was no reason why, with a little application, she should not make it serve her purpose as a school. The lack of tuition was its one great drawback; there seemed no signs whatsoever of the promised shorthand lessons. Finally Joan plucked up her courage one morning in the second week, and invaded Miss Bacon's private office.

"What about my shorthand?" she inquired from just within the doorway; "when shall I begin?"

Miss Bacon had changed her shoes for a pair of bedroom slippers and was occupying the arm-chair, immersed in the newspaper. She started at Joan's abrupt question, the movement jerking the glasses from off her nose. She picked them up nervously and blinked at Joan.

"What did you say?—shorthand? Oh, yes, of course! It is really Edith's duty to take you in that; still, as she is not here, I propose to dictate to you myself after lunch. My first duty in the mornings is to master the newspaper; there might be some openings advertised." She turned again to her news-sheet. "Why not employ yourself practising on the typewriter?" she suggested.

Joan would have liked to reply that she was tired of practising sentences on the typewriter and hungry for some real work to do, but she had not the heart to be unkind to the poor little woman. She spent a disconsolate morning and stayed out for lunch longer than usual. On her return Miss Bacon was waiting for her on the top of the stairs.

"My dear," she said in an excited voice, "some work has come in. A man has just brought it, and he must have it by to-morrow morning. I hope you will be able to get it done, for I have promised, and a lot may depend on it."

So much depended on it that she herself decided to help Joan with the work. She was not, it appeared, even as experienced as Joan, and by 6.30 the two of them had only completed about half the typing. Joan's back ached and her fingers tingled, but Miss Bacon's eyes behind the glasses were strained to the verge of tears, two hectic spots of colour burned in her cheeks and her fingers stumbled and faltered over the keys.

As the clock struck seven Joan straightened herself with a sigh of relief.

"It is no use," she said, "we cannot get it done; he will have to wait for his silly old papers."

The blood died suddenly out of Miss Bacon's face, her mouth trembled. "It must be done," she answered; "you do not understand. It is the first work that has been brought to us for weeks. The man is a stranger; if it is well done and up to time he will give us some more; besides he will pay"—for a second she lifted her eyes and looked at Joan—"I must have the money," she said.

Her face, working under the stress of some strong emotion, was painful to see. She was so weak, so useless, so driven. Joan looked away hastily and went on with her work. From time to time, though, she stole a glance at Miss Bacon. It was dreadful to know that the poor old woman was crying; quietly, hopelessly, great drops that splashed on to her fingers as they stumbled over the keys.

At last Joan could bear it no longer, she rose quickly and crossed over to Miss Bacon, putting her hands over the useless fingers.

"Don't you bother with it any more, Miss Bacon," she said. "I am nearly through with my share now and I can come early to-morrow and get it all done before breakfast. It is silly to work away at it now when we are both tired out."

Miss Bacon gulped down her tears and looked up nervously. "You think you can," she asked; "you have realized how important it is?"

"Yes," Joan told her, "and I know I can. I won't disappoint you, really I won't. Let us go across the road and get some tea before we go home," she suggested.

Miss Bacon looked away again hastily. "You go," she muttered, "I don't need tea, I——"

"You are going to come and have tea with me," Joan interrupted. It had flashed on her that Miss Bacon had not even the money for that.

Over the hot buttered toast and the tea Miss Bacon poured out her troubles to Joan. They came, once she had started, in an unquenchable flood of reminiscences. The little woman had reached the last inch of endurance; the kindly sympathy, the touch of Joan's hands broke down all barriers of reserve or caution. She had been a governess, it appeared, and during all her years of service she had laid by enough money to buy the business at Baker Street.

"I got it cheap," she owned. "I can see now that the other people must have failed too, and I have no head for business. I am absolutely at the end of things now; if I died to-morrow it would be a pauper's funeral. I often think of that when I see a gorgeous hearse and procession passing through the street."

Her words were ridiculous, but real tragedy looked out of her eyes. "Ruin stares me in the face," she went on, "from every paper I read, from every person I meet. I have no money, not even enough to buy food, as you have guessed. Ruin! and I have not the courage to get out of it all. I have never been very brave."

"But I think you have been brave," Joan tried to reassure her. "You have held on for so long alone. And I expect we have turned a corner now, things will be better to-morrow."

Miss Bacon stared at her teacup with hopeless eyes. "That is what I used to think at first," she said, "to-morrow will be better than to-day—it never has been yet."

She rose to go, and Joan, prompted by a sudden quick desire to help, leant forward and caught hold of her coat. The tragedy of the withered figure, the stupid, aimless face, struck her as the cruellest thing she had yet seen in life. What were her own troubles compared to this other's dull facing of loneliness, failure and death.

"You must cheer up, you really must," she begged; "and as for the money part, let me pay down the rest of my fee now. I have got three pounds out with me; do take it, please do, you see it really is yours."

Taking the money seemed to add an extra gloom to Miss Bacon's outlook; none the less she did not require very much persuading, and Joan, pressing it into her hand, piloted her across the road and saw her into the Underground station.

It was the last glimpse she was to have of the quaint figure which had crossed her life for so short a time, but that she did not realize. She only knew that her heart ached because she had been able to do so little to help, and because Miss Bacon's story had brought suddenly to her mind a knowledge of how terribly hard life can be to those who are not strong enough to stand against it.

True to her word, she arrived at Baker Street very early the next morning and the momentous piece of typewriting was finished before Miss Bacon's usual hour of arrival. Joan put it on the table with the old lady's paper and went out to get some breakfast, as she had had to leave Shamrock House before seven.

She was greeted on her return by the girl who had let her in on the first night. There was a man with her who had taken possession of Miss Bacon's chair and who was reading the paper morosely, both elbows on the table.

He glanced up at Joan as she entered. "Is this Miss Bacon, by any chance?" he asked, bringing out the words with a certain grim defiance.

Edith interrupted Joan's disclaimer by a shrill laugh. "Lor' bless you, no, she is one of the pupils, same as me." She turned to Joan. "Did you pay anything to join?" she asked. Joan resented the familiarity of her tone. "Would have liked to have warned you the other night, but Bacon was too nippy."

Joan flushed slightly. Disregarding the interruption she spoke quickly, answering the man's question:

"Miss Bacon must be ill, I am afraid," she said; "it is so very late for her, she is nearly always here by ten. She will probably be here to-morrow if you care to come again."

Again Edith giggled and the man frowned heavily.

"Well, she probably won't," he answered. "She has done a bunk, that's the long and short of it, and there is not a blasted penny of what she owes me paid. Damn the woman with her whining, wheezing letters, 'Do give me time—I'll pay in time.' Might have known it would end in her bunking."

"I don't think you ought to speak of her like that," Joan attempted; "after all, it is only that she does not happen to be here this morning. She would have let me know if she had not been coming back."

"Oh, would she?" growled the man; "well, I don't care a blasted hell what you think. I don't need to be taught my business by the likes of you."

From the passage to which she had retired Edith attracted Joan's attention by violent signs. "There is no use arguing with him," she announced in an audible whisper, "he's fair mad; this is about the tenth time he's missed her. Come out here a minute, I want to talk to you."

Joan went reluctantly. She disliked the girl instinctively, she disliked the dirty white blouse from which the red neck rose, ornamented by a string of cheap pearls, and the greasy black ribbon which bound up Edith's head of curls.

"Are you being a fool?" the girl asked, "or are you trying to kid that man? Haven't you cottoned to old Bacon's game yet?"

"I am sorry for Miss Bacon, if that is what you mean," Joan answered stiffly.

"Sorry!" Edith's face was expressive of vast contempt. "That won't save you from much in this world. I tell you one thing, if you lent the old hag any money yesterday you won't see her again this side of the grave, so there isn't any use your hanging about here waiting for that."

Joan favoured her with a little collected stare. "Thank you," she said, "it is very thoughtful of you to think of warning me." She left her and walked back deliberately into the room where the man was sitting. "There were some typed sheets lying on the top of the paper," she said; "do you mind letting me have them back."

"Yes I do," he answered briefly; "man called in for them a little while back and that is five shillings towards what the old hag owes me, anyhow."

It was in its way rather humorous that she should have worked so hard to put five shillings into such an objectionable pocket. Joan felt strongly tempted to argue the matter with him, but discretion proving wiser than valour, she left him to his spoils and retired into the other room. She would not leave the place, she decided, in case Miss Bacon did turn up; it would be very disagreeable for her to have to face such a man by herself.

By lunch time the man stalked away full of threats as to what he would do, and Edith went with him. Joan stayed on till six, and there was still no sign of Miss Bacon. It was strange that she should neither have telephoned nor written.

Over dinner at Shamrock House that night she told Rose Brent the story of her fortnight's adventure, ending up with the rash impulse which had led her to pay up the four guineas because Miss Bacon had seemed in such bitter need. The girl met her tale with abrupt laughter.

"I am afraid what your unpleasant acquaintance of this morning told you is probably true," she said. "After all, if you went and handed out four guineas it was a direct temptation to the poor old woman to get away on."

"I don't believe she would take it just for that," Joan tried to argue. "I know she wanted it awfully badly, but it was to help her pull through and things were going to run better afterwards. I don't believe she would just take it and slip away without saying a word to me."

"Faith in human nature is all very well," the other answered, "but it is awfully apt to let you down, especially in the working world."

"I shall go on believing for a bit," Joan said; "she was looking so awfully ill yesterday, it may just be that she could not come up to office to-day."

"May be," Rose agreed. "When you are tired of waiting for the return of the prodigal let me know and I will see if I cannot get you in somewhere. I ought to be able to help. And look here, my child, never you pay another penny for tuition on those lines; you could get all the learning you need at the County Council Night Schools, and it is a good deal cheaper."

Joan put in two days at No. 2, Baker Street, waiting for the return of Miss Bacon or for some message which might explain her absence, but nothing and no one came. On the morning of the third day she found that the stout and bad-tempered man had carried out his vague threats. The place had been taken possession of, already they were removing the typewriters and tables under the direction of a bailiff. Even the plate bearing Miss Bacon's name had vanished, and boards announcing the top flat to let flaunted themselves from the area railings.

After that Joan gave up the hope. Sometimes she wondered if after all Miss Bacon had found the necessary courage to be done with it all, and if her silence betokened death. It was more likely though that the poor old lady had merely sunk one rung lower on the ladder of self-esteem and was dragging out a miserable existence somewhere in the outside purlieus of London.



CHAPTER XIII

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

R. BROWNING.

Following Rose's suggestion, and because for the time being there really seemed nothing for her to do, unless she could show herself a little better trained, Joan joined the County Council Night Schools in the neighbourhood. She would go there five evenings in the week; three for shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all ages and all ranks—clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on all round them.

The boy and girl section of the community indulged in a little rough and tumble love-making. Even long office hours and the deadly monotony of standing behind desk or counter all day could not quite do away with the riotous spirit of youth. They giggled and chattered among themselves, and passed surreptitious notes from one form to the other when Mr. Phillips was not looking.

Mr. Phillips, the shorthand master, was a red-faced, extremely irascible little man. He came to these classes from some other school in the city where he had been teaching all day, and naturally, by the time evening arrived, his none too placid temper had been stretched to breaking-point. He was extremely impatient with any non-comprehension of his complicated method of instruction; and he would pass from row to row, after his dictation had been finished, snatching away the papers from his paralysed pupils and tearing them into fragments had the exercise been badly done.

Joan noticed the man who sat next her on the first and every night. He was quite the worst person she had ever seen at learning anything. He was not by any means young, grey already showed in the hair above his ears, and his forehead wrinkled with innumerable lines. He had, she thought, the most pathetic eyes, large and honest, but quite irredeemably stupid.

"I can't make head or tale of it," he confessed to her on the second night. "And Mr. Phillips gets so annoyed with me, it only muddles me more."

"Why do you bother to learn?" she asked. It seemed rather strange that a man of his age should have to struggle with so elementary a subject.

"I have worked in an office for the last ten years," he explained. "The new boss has suddenly decided that shorthand is necessary. I don't know," he spoke rather vaguely, his eyes wandering round the room, "but it is just possible he might ask me to go if I did not master it. I have been there so long I hardly like to have to look for another place."

"It seems such a shame," Joan told Rose afterwards, "that these people can never get a place where they feel really safe. They live always expecting to be turned off at a moment's notice, or to have somebody put in on top of them. Everybody seems to be fighting against everybody else; doesn't anyone ever stop to help?"

The older girl laughed. "Why, yes," she said. "The world, or at least the people in it, are not so bad as all that. Only life is a case of push and struggle, and it is only natural that people should want to get the best they can for their money. Also it wouldn't be fair if the ones who worked best were not preferred to the others."

Mr. Simpson, Joan's perplexed friend of the shorthand class, was certainly one of the stupidest people she had ever met, yet she was terribly sorry for him. He was the butt of the class, which did not add to the hilarity of his position, because of the torrent of abuse which he always drew from Mr. Phillips at some stage in the evening.

"Now," Mr. Phillips would call out, starting the lesson by a blackboard demonstration, "silence and attention, please."

He would draw a series of strokes and dashes on the blackboard, calling out their various meanings, and the class would set itself to copy them. The lesson would proceed for some time in silence, save for Mr. Phillips' voice, but presently the bewilderment caused by so many new outlines would terrify Mr. Simpson and he would lean forward to interrupt, stammering, as he always did when nervous.

"Why is 'M' made like that?" he would say. "Wouldn't it be much better if it were made the other way?"

"Why, why?" Mr. Phillips would thunder. "If you would just learn what you are taught, sir, and not try to think, it would be a great deal pleasanter for the rest of us."

Mr. Simpson would get a little red under the onslaught, but his eyes always retained their patient, perplexed expression. He seemed impervious to the impression he created in the back row. "Laughing-stock of the whole class," Mr. Phillips called him in a moment of extreme irritation, and the expression caught on.

"I am so silly," he said to Joan. "I really am not surprised that they think me funny."

She was the one person who was ever nice to him or who did attempt to explain things to him. Sometimes they would get there a little early and she would go over his exercises with him. He might be thick-skinned to the want of tolerance which the rest of the class meted out to him; he was undoubtedly grateful to Joan for the kindness she showed him.

One evening on his way to class he plucked up courage to purchase a small buttonhole for her, and blushed a very warm red when Joan took his offering with a smile and pinned it into her coat.

"How nice of you," she said. "I love violets, and these smell so sweet."

"They are not half sweet enough for you," he managed to say, stuttering furiously.

Joan had a moment's uneasiness. Surely the wretched little man was not going to fall in love with her? She glanced sideways at him during the class and what she saw reassured her. His clothes, his dirty hands, his whole appearance, put him in a different world to herself. However kind she might be to him, he surely could not fail to recognize that it was only the same kindness which would prompt her to cross the road to give a penny to a beggar?

Unfortunately Mr. Simpson belonged to a class which is very slow to recognize any difference in rank save that of wealth. He was a humble little man before Joan, but that was because he was by nature humble, and also because he was in love. He thought her very wonderful and beautiful beyond his range of words, but he imagined her as coming from much the same kind of home as his own, and she seemed to exist in the same strata of life.

A night or two after the flower episode he fixed adoring eyes on her and asked if he might be allowed to see her home.

"Well, it is rather out of your way," Joan remonstrated, she had so often seen him trudge off in the opposite direction.

"That is of no consequence," he replied, with his usual stutter.

The streets were dark, quiet, and deserted. Now and then as they hurried along, for Joan walked as fast as she could to ward off conversation, they passed a solitary policeman doing his beat, and dim, scarce seen lovers emerged out of the shadows holding each other's hands.

"Will you not take my arm?" Mr. Simpson ventured presently. He was slightly out of breath in his effort to keep up with her.

"No, thank you," Joan answered. The whole occurrence was too ridiculous, yet for once in her life her sense of humour was failing her. "And I wish you would not bother to come any further, it is quite unnecessary."

Her tone was more than chilly. Mr. Simpson, however remained undaunted. His slow and ponderous mind had settled on a certain course; it would need more than a little chilliness to turn it from its purpose.

"I was going to ask you," he went on, "whether you would do me the honour of coming to the theatre one evening? If you have a mind that turns that way sometimes."

"No, thank you," answered Joan once more. "I never go to theatres, and I shouldn't go with you in any case," she added desperately, as a final resource.

"I meant no offence," the man answered, humble as ever. "I should always act straight by a girl, and for you——"

"Oh, don't, please don't," Joan interrupted. She stopped in her walk and faced round on him. "Can't you see how impossible it would be for me——" she broke off abruptly, rather ashamed of her outburst. "I am going to be a snob in a minute, if I am not careful," she finished to herself.

"I know I am not amusing, or anything," the man went on; "but you have always seemed so kind and considerate. If I have offended in any way, I am more than sorry."

Joan felt that he was frowning as he always frowned in hopeless perplexity over his shorthand.

"I am not offended," she tried to explain more gently. "Only, please do not ask me to go out with you again, or offer to walk home with me. Here we are anyway, this is where I live." She turned at the bottom of Shamrock House steps and held out her hand to him. "Good-night," she said.

Simpson did not take her hand, instead he stared up at her; she could see how shiny and red his face was under the lamp.

"You are not angry with me?" he stuttered.

"Why, no, of course not," Joan prevaricated. Then she ran up the steps and let herself into the hall without looking back at him.

For two or three days she attempted to ignore the man's presence in class next her, and Simpson himself in no way intruded. He had taken her snubbing like a man; from the height of his dreams he had fallen into an apathetic despair; the only effect it had on him was to make him stupider than ever at his work. Then one evening, with a face working rather painfully, he told her that he did not intend to come any more.

"I am going to another centre," he said, gathering his books together and not looking at her.

"Has Mr. Phillips been too much for you?" she asked, wilfully ignoring the deeper meaning behind his words.

"No," he answered, "it is not that. It may seem quite absurd," he went on laboriously, "but I want to ask you to let me have your note-book. I have got a new one to give you in its place." He produced a packet from his pocket and held it out to her.

Later on, when she thought over the thing, she smiled. A note-book seemed so singularly unromantic, but at the time she felt nearer tears. The look in his eyes haunted her for many days. She had been the one glimpse of romance in his dreary existence, and she had had to kill the dream so ruthlessly.



CHAPTER XIV

"It seems her heart was not washed clean Of tinted dreams of 'Might have been.'"

RUTH YOUNG.

There followed a weary time for Joan. The poem she had repeated on her first morning at Shamrock House had to be recalled again and again and fell away finally from its glad meaning in the bitter disillusionment which looking for work entailed. Wherein lay the value of cheerfulness when day after day saw her weary and dispirited from a fruitless search, from hope-chilling visits to registry offices, from unsuccessful applications in answer to the advertisements which thronged the morning papers? She went at it at first eagerly, hopefully. "To-day I shall succeed," was her waking motto. But every evening brought its tale of disappointment.

"There is no one in the world as useless as I am," she thought finally.

"It is only just a bad season," Rose Brent tried to cheer her up; "there is lots of unemployment about; we will find something for you soon."

But to Joan it seemed as if the iron of being absolutely unwanted was entering into her soul.

There was only one shred of comfort in all this dreariness. Life at Shamrock House was so cheap that she was eating up but very little of Uncle John's allowance. She wondered sometimes if the old people at home ever asked at the Bank as to how her money matters stood, or had they shut her so completely out of their lives that even that was of no interest to them? Miss Abercrombie wrote fairly regularly, but though she could give Joan news of the home people she had to admit that Aunt Janet never mentioned or alluded to her niece in any way.

"She is harder than I thought she could be," wrote Miss Abercrombie; "or is it perhaps that you have killed her heart?"

Once Joan's pride fell so low that she found herself writing Aunt Janet a pathetic, vague appeal to be allowed to creep back into the shelter of the old life. But she tore the letter up in the morning and scattered its little pieces along the gutter of Digby Street. Digby Street was sucking into its undercurrents her youth, her cheerfulness, her hope; only pride was left, she must make a little struggle to hold on to pride, and then news came from Miss Abercrombie that Aunt Janet had been ill and that the Rutherfords had gone abroad. Apart from her fruitless journeys in search of work, her days held nothing. She so dreaded the atmosphere of Shamrock House that very often she would have to walk herself tired out of all feeling before she could go back there; sometimes she cried night after night, weak, stupid tears, shut up in the dreariness of her little room, and very often her thoughts turned back to Gilbert—the comfort of their little flat, the theatres, the suppers, the dances and the passion-held nights when he had loved her. More and more she thought of Gilbert as the dreariness of Digby Street closed round her days.

If her baby had lived, would life have been easier for her, or would it only have meant—as she had first believed in her days of panic that it would mean—an added hardship, a haunting shame? It was the lack of love in her life that left so aching a void, the fact that apparently no one cared or heeded what became of her. The baby would at least have brought love to her, in its little hands, in its weak strength that looked to her for shelter.

"I should be happier," she said once stormily to Rose, "if I could have a cat to keep. I think I shall buy a kitten."

The other girl had looked at her, smiling dryly. "Pets are strictly against the rules in Shamrock House," she reminded her.

It was in one of her very despondent moods that Joan first met the young man with blue eyes. She never knew him by any name, and their acquaintance, or whatever it could be called, came to an abrupt end on the first occasion when he ventured to speak to her. Womanlike, she had been longing for him to do so for some time, but resented it bitterly when he did. Perhaps something faintly contemptuous, a shadowed hint that he had noticed her interest in him, flamed up the desire to snub him in her heart, or perhaps it was a feeling of self-shame to find herself so poor a beggar at friendship's gate.

For a week he had met her at the same place and followed her on her way down Victoria Street. Then one night, just as they came under the lights of Vauxhall Clock tower, he spoke to her.

"Doing anything to-night?" he said. "Shall we dine together?"

She turned from him in a white heat of anger, more with herself than with him, though that, of course, it was not given him to know. But he caught a glimpse of her face and read his answer, and since he was in reality a nice boy, and insult had been the last thought in his mind, he took off his hat quickly and apologized.

"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said; "I can see that I have made a mistake."

Joan did not answer him, she had moved quickly away in the direction of Digby Street, but as she passed by the dingy houses she knew that he was not following any more, and she felt the hot, hard lump in her throat which is so difficult to swallow. She had wanted to go to dinner with him, she had wanted to, that was the thought that mocked at her all night.

It was one evening about a fortnight after that episode that Rose called Joan into her room on their way upstairs.

"I want to talk to you," she said, closing the door behind them. "Has Miss Nigel spoken yet?"

"To me?" asked Joan; "what about?"

"I see, then, she hasn't," Rose answered, "but she will soon. Did you notice that the night before last Miss Wembly, who sits at the next table to ours, had a guest to dinner?"

"No," Joan admitted; "but why? What has it got to do with me?"

"I am coming to that," the other answered; she stood with her head averted, looking for a cigarette. "I am always a damned silent person myself," she went on, "and I do not think anyone can accuse me of being curious about their pasts. I do not want to know a blessed thing about yours, for instance, but that guest of Miss Wembly's was a nurse from St. George's Hospital."

"Oh," said Joan blankly; she was standing just within the door, her back against the clothes that hung on it.

"Well," Rose hurried on, "it has gone all round the place like lightning. They aren't fond of you because they hate me and we are friends. Yesterday one of them took the story to Miss Nigel and she is going to ask you to leave."

"What story?" asked Joan; she had not followed the other's swift deduction.

Rose lit a cigarette and held out the case to Joan. "Have one," she said, "and come and sit down. As I said before, I am not asking for personal history, I am telling you the facts as they affect this place. They say you were to have had a baby, and you are not married."

She shrugged her shoulders and sank into a chair.

"You mean," whispered Joan, "that the nurse told them that?"

"I suppose so," Rose admitted; "anyway, Miss Nigel spoke of it to me to-day. She is not a bad sort, Miss Nigel, she was very kind to me once, but she is going to tell you to go."

"What have you thought of it?" asked Joan.

"I don't think about other people's affairs," Rose answered. "Come and sit down, I have got some jam for you after the powder, for I believe I have found a job for you. But first you must move into diggings, these clubs are all in a league, every one of them will be shut to you."

"You are not bothering to ask if it is true," said Joan. She moved forward and sat down, her hands clenched on her lap. "I suppose——"

Rose interrupted, putting a swift hand on hers. "Don't," she said, "don't deny it or tell me the truth, whichever you were thinking of doing. It does not matter to me. Because I like you I have interfered as much as I have so that you may be prepared for Miss Nigel's attack." She smiled. "It will be an attack too—having a baby and no husband to people like Miss Nigel is worse than any criminal offence."

"Yes," Joan admitted. A vision of Aunt Janet's horror-stricken face came across her mind. "When I heard that it had been killed in the accident, I was glad, glad. I had not got the courage to go on and brave it out. I was glad to think that I could start life again, that no one would know or look at me like the people at home had looked at me when they knew. And now——"

"And now?" Rose repeated; she was studying Joan's face with her eyes half closed, a peculiar trick she had when her thoughts were unpleasant.

"And now it doesn't seem worth while going on any longer," Joan burst forth. "There must be other lives that are better worth living than this. Do you know that for the last ten days I have made fifteen shillings addressing envelopes from nine till six. It would be better, surely it would be better, to be what people call bad!"

Rose watched the flushed face. "If a life of that sort would give you any pleasure," she spoke slowly, "I should say live it by all means. The trouble is, it would not please you. If you care to listen, I will tell you a bit of my own story. It is not altogether pleasant, but in your present frame of mind it will not do you any harm to hear it."

She paused a moment, head thrown back, blowing smoke-rings to the ceiling.

"I came to London ten years ago," she began presently, "and I was twenty-one at the time. I had been keeping house for a brother in India, and I had had a good time, but a spirit of restlessness had come upon me and I would not leave him alone till he let me come home and start on my own. I had, of course, no people. Poor brother, he gave way after many arguments, knowing as little as I did about the life here, and I came. He died the year afterwards of enteric. I had been on an allowance from him before, but when he died that stopped and I was left absolutely penniless. You have had a bad time in that way, but I had a worse one. Still I was young and strong, and, above all, I was a fighter, so I won through. I got a post as typist in a city office and I drifted to Shamrock House. My working hours were lengthy, sometimes it was after half-past seven before I came out of office. Then I would hurry through the crowded streets, as you do now, and always that walk, through gaily lighted pleasure-seeking crowds, would end for me in the dark dreariness where Great Smith Street turns away from Victoria Street, a ten-minute walk through one of London's poorest neighbourhoods, and—Shamrock House! Those were the days in which I did my hardest kicking against fate; it was so unjust, so unfair, and all the while youth and power to enjoy, which is the heritage of youth, were slipping past me. That is how you feel, isn't it?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes," Joan said.

"I know," Rose answered softly; "well, wait and hear. I was in this mood, and feeling more than usually desperate, when I met the woman. I need not give her a name, not even to you; I doubt if I ever knew her real one. I had seen her several times, perhaps she had noticed me, though she had quaint, unseeing eyes that appeared to gaze through you blankly. She was a beautiful woman with an arresting beauty hard to define, and she used, as far as I could see, neither paint nor powder. One evening, just as I was turning into Great Smith Street, I found her at my elbow.

"'You live down there,' she asked in a curious, expressionless way as if she hardly expected an answer.

"I was startled at her talking to me and at the same time interested.

"'Yes,' I said.

"'It is dark and very dreary,' she went on, talking almost to herself, 'why do you choose such a life?'