Joan laughed without raising her face. “Yes, ma’am, I know that,” she answered. “I’ll be good.” “Yes, dear, and of course that can happen too,” agreed the little old lady.!

“I’m very much run down,” she said. “I may have to go away.” “You mean my friendship is going to be of no use to you?” asked Joan.

And she had promised him. He needed her. The words she had spoken to Madge, not dreaming then of their swift application. They came back to her. “God has called me. He girded His sword upon me.” What right had she to leave it rusting in its scabbard, turning aside from the pathway pointed out to her because of one weak, useless life, crouching in her way. It was not as if she were being asked to do evil herself that good might come. The decision had been taken out of her hands. All she had to do was to remain quiescent, not interfering, awaiting her orders. Her business was with her own part, not with another’s. To be willing to sacrifice oneself: that was at the root of all service. Sometimes it was one’s own duty, sometimes that of another. Must one never go forward because another steps out of one’s way, voluntarily? Besides, she might have been mistaken. That picture, ever before her, of the woman pausing with the brush above her tongue—that little stilled gasp! It may have been but a phantasm, born of her own fevered imagination. She clung to that, desperately. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said. “I was just wanting you.” Even Mrs. Grundy herself couldn’t object to a journalist dining with a politician!