never be really happy with an unconfessed lie on their mind.

Gilbert won her to do as he thought necessary, first by persuasion and
then by using the power which he had discovered he could wield over her
by his touch.

"For my sake, darling," he argued, "it is all right for us because we
understand each other, but the world would certainly describe me as a
cad."

So for his sake Joan told Mrs. Thomas, with whom she had been living,
that she had accepted a residential post as private secretary; packed up
her boxes and took her departure amidst a shower of good wishes and
warnings as to how she was to hold her own and not be put upon. To Aunt
Janet, with a painful twinge of regret, Joan wrote the same lie. She
wanted to tell the truth to Aunt Janet more even than she wanted to live
it out aloud to herself. The memory of Aunt Janet's face with its kindly
deep-set eyes kept her miserable and uncomfortable, and the home letters
brought no more a feeling of pleasure, only a sense of shame and
distaste.

How silly it was to connect shame with what she and Gilbert had chosen
as life! Yet, unfortunately for her peace of mind, the word was
constantly reverting to her thoughts. "It is the telling lies that I am
ashamed of," she would argue hotly to herself, and she would shut her
heart to the still small voice and throw herself because of it with more
zest than ever into their life together.

Gilbert's flat was high up in one of the top stories of a block of
buildings which fronts on to Knightsbridge, bright, airy and cheerful.
Not too big, "Just room for the two of us and we shut the world
outside," as Gilbert took pleasure in saying. It only consisted of four
rooms, their bedroom and dressing-room, the sitting-room and Gilbert's
smoking-room, a place that he talked vaguely of working in and where he
could entertain his men friends, without bothering Joan, when they
called to see him.

The windows of their bedroom opened out over the green of the Park.
Sometimes the scent of the heliotrope crept up even as far as that;
whenever it did Joan would have to hold her breath and stand quite still
because the fragrance brought--not Aunt Janet now--but Gilbert before
her. It had blown in just like that the first night she had been in the
room; the memories it could rouse were bewildering, intoxicating, and
yet ... Joan would have to push the disturbing thoughts from her and run
to find Gilbert if he were anywhere in their tiny