There came a fierce anger into the dark eyes. “Why did you listen to it?” she demanded. “All would have been easy if you hadn’t.” “I hope nobody saw me,” he said with a laugh. “But I couldn’t bear to leave her there, unhonoured.”!

“Only two,” answered the Human Document, “both girls.” She would accept it. The wonder of it should cast out her doubts and fears. She would seek to make herself worthy of it. Consecrate it with her steadfastness, her devotion.

One of Joan’s earliest recollections was the picture of herself standing before the high cheval glass in her mother’s dressing-room. Her clothes lay scattered far and wide, falling where she had flung them; not a shred of any kind of covering was left to her. She must have been very small, for she could remember looking up and seeing high above her head the two brass knobs by which the glass was fastened to its frame. Suddenly, out of the upper portion of the glass, there looked a scared red face. It hovered there a moment, and over it in swift succession there passed the expressions, first of petrified amazement, secondly of shocked indignation, and thirdly of righteous wrath. And then it swooped down upon her, and the image in the glass became a confusion of small naked arms and legs mingled with green cotton gloves and purple bonnet strings. It was there that he came to her. “And mind your p’s and q’s,” she added. “You’re in a difficult position. And not all the eyes watching you are friendly.”