The old fanatic’s eyes passed from face to face. There was almost the suggestion of a smile about the savage mouth. “I’ve always been a coward,” he continued. “I fell in love with you the first day I met you on the stairs. But I dared not tell you.”!

“That’s all, my lad,” she said with a smile. “My love to you, and God speed you.” “Remember me to him,” he said. “And tell him I thank him for all those years of love and gentleness. I don’t think he will be offended.”

“Does it matter what we call it?” answered Joan. “It was a voice.” But even that did not help her. It seemed in some mysterious way to be no longer her room, but the room of someone she had known and half forgotten: who would never come back. It gave her the same feeling she had experienced on returning to the house in London: that the place was haunted. The high cheval glass from her mother’s dressing-room had been brought there for her use. The picture of an absurdly small child—the child to whom this room had once belonged—standing before it naked, rose before her eyes. She had wanted to see herself. She had thought that only her clothes stood in the way. If we could but see ourselves, as in some magic mirror? All the garments usage and education has dressed us up in laid aside. What was she underneath her artificial niceties, her prim moralities, her laboriously acquired restraints, her unconscious pretences and hypocrisies? She changed her clothes for a loose robe, and putting out the light drew back the curtains. The moon peeped in over the top of the tall pines, but it only stared at her, indifferent. It seemed to be looking for somebody else. “But I’ve got to give it up,” she added. “I can’t leave Dad.”