step she took. Yet kindliness and a certain strength shone at Joan from
behind the large, round-rimmed glasses she wore, and her mouth was clean
cut and sharp.

"This is Mrs. Westwood." Nurse Taylor introduced them briefly. "She
wants to have a little talk with you, Miss Rutherford. If I were you I
should tell her about things," she added pointedly. "I do not know if
you have any plans made, but you are up for discharge next week."

She bustled off and Mrs. Westwood drew up a chair and sat down close to
Joan, staring at the girl with short-sighted, pink-lidded eyes.

"You will wonder who I am," she said at last. "Perhaps you have never
noticed me before, but I am a very frequent visitor. We run a mission in
the South-West of London, with the object of helping young girls. I want
you to talk to me about yourself, to be quite frank with me and to
remember, if I seem to usurp on your privacy, that I am an older woman
and that my only wish is to help you."

"It is very kind of you," began Joan, "but----"

"You may not need material help," the woman put in hastily; "but,
spiritually, who is not in need of help from God."

Joan could think of no suitable reply for this and they sat in silence,
the woman studying her face intently. Then presently, flushing with the
earnestness of her purpose, she put out a cold hand and took Joan's.

"I think they have left it to me to tell you," she said. "The little
life that was within you has been killed by your accident."

The colour flamed to Joan's face. A sense of awe and a feeling of
intense relief surged up in her. "Oh, what a good thing!" she gasped,
almost before she realized what she said.

Mrs. Westwood sat back in her chair, her eyes no longer looked at Joan.
"The child which God had given you even in your sin," she said stiffly.

Joan leaned forward quickly. "I did not mean just that," she said, "and
yet I did. You do not know, you can't guess, how afraid I was getting.
Everyone's hand against me, and even the people who had most loved me
seeming to hate me because of this."

Her voice trailed into silence before the stern disapproval of the other
woman's face. Yet once having started, she was driven on to speak all
the jumble of thoughts that had lain in her mind these last two months.

"I was not ashamed or afraid, to begin with," she hurried the words out.
"It had not seemed to me wrong. I lived with him because I thought I
loved him and we did not want to get