“I’ll try,” he said. “And I want him, if that’s any consolation to you,” Joan answered with a short laugh. It wasn’t much of a confession. The child was cute enough to have found that out for herself. “Only you see I can’t have him. And there’s an end of it.”!

“I am only at the end of a journey when you need me,” he had answered, and they had kissed. And next morning she returned to her own life. “No,” laughed Joan. “At least, I don’t think so.”

But it was her Gethsemane: the best that Fate had been able to do for her. It was here that her choice would be made. She felt that. And then there flashed remembrance of her mother. She, too, had laid aside herself; had thought that love and duty could teach one to be other than one was. The Ego was the all important thing, entrusted to us as the talents of silver to the faithful servant: to be developed, not for our own purposes, but for the service of the Master. It seemed to her that it was she that they were laughing at, pointing her out to one another, jeering at her, reviling her, threatening her.