“Didn’t you love him?” asked the girl, staring. “Wouldn’t you have helped him?” “Is it impossible, then, to combine duty and success?” questioned Joan.!

“Did he, Carlyle, ever come to this church?” asked Joan. Joan stopped. “Why, it’s the house you are always talking about,” she said. “Are you thinking of taking it?”

Joan went back by the early train. She met some people at the station that she knew and travelled up with them. That picture of Mrs. Phillips’s tongue just showing beyond the line of Mrs. Phillips’s cheek remained at the back of her mind; but it was not until she was alone in her own rooms that she dared let her thoughts return to it. “That’s like you women,” he answered with a smile. “You pretend to be superior; and then you copy us.” “I know,” whispered Joan. “I’ve been there, too. I knew you were doing it, though I didn’t quite know how—till the other day. I wouldn’t think. I wanted to pretend that I didn’t. I know all you can say. I’ve been listening to it. It was right of you to want to give it all up to me for his sake. But it would be wrong of me to take it. I don’t quite see why. I can’t explain it. But I mustn’t. So you see it would be no good.”