They talked without looking at one another. They did not speak about themselves. “It only came an hour or two ago,” her father explained. “If he wrote to you by the same post, you may have left before it arrived.”!

She had the feeling that he was being borne by comrades. A wizened little man had been listening to it all one day. He had a curiously rat-like face, with round, red, twinkling eyes, and a long, pointed nose that twitched as he talked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “No reason why it shouldn’t be,” he said. “I’ve generally found him right.” Often on returning home, not knowing why, she would look into the glass. It seemed to her that the girlhood she had somehow missed was awakening in her, taking possession of her, changing her. The lips she had always seen pressed close and firm were growing curved, leaving a little parting, as though they were not quite so satisfied with one another. The level brows were becoming slightly raised. It gave her a questioning look that was new to her. The eyes beneath were less confident. They seemed to be seeking something. “But why should you give up your art?” persisted Joan. It was that was sticking in her mind. “I should have thought that, if only for the sake of the child, you would have gone on with it.”