impson himself in no way intruded. He had taken her
snubbing like a man; from the height of his dreams he had fallen into an
apathetic despair; the only effect it had on him was to make him
stupider than ever at his work. Then one evening, with a face working
rather painfully, he told her that he did not intend to come any more.

"I am going to another centre," he said, gathering his books together
and not looking at her.

"Has Mr. Phillips been too much for you?" she asked, wilfully ignoring
the deeper meaning behind his words.

"No," he answered, "it is not that. It may seem quite absurd," he went
on laboriously, "but I want to ask you to let me have your note-book. I
have got a new one to give you in its place." He produced a packet from
his pocket and held it out to her.

Later on, when she thought over the thing, she smiled. A note-book
seemed so singularly unromantic, but at the time she felt nearer tears.
The look in his eyes haunted her for many days. She had been the one
glimpse of romance in his dreary existence, and she had had to kill the
dream so ruthlessly.

CHAPTER XIV

"It seems her heart was not washed clean
Of tinted dreams of 'Might have been.'"

RUTH YOUNG.

There followed a weary time for Joan. The poem she had repeated on her
first morning at Shamrock House had to be recalled again and again and
fell away finally from its glad meaning in the bitter disillusionment
which looking for work entailed. Wherein lay the value of cheerfulness
when day after day saw her weary and dispirited from a fruitless search,
from hope-chilling visits to registry offices, from unsuccessful
applications in answer to the advertisements which thronged the morning
papers? She went at it at first eagerly, hopefully. "To-day I shall
succeed," was her waking motto. But every evening brought its tale of
disappointment.

"There is no one in the world as useless as I am," she thought finally.

"It is only just a bad season," Rose Brent tried to cheer her up; "there
is lots of unemployment about; we will find something for you soon."

But to Joan it seemed as if the iron of being absolutely unwanted was
entering into her soul.

There was only one shred of comfort in all this dreariness. Life at
Shamrock House was so cheap that she was eating up but very little of
Uncle John's allowance. She wondered sometimes if the old people at home
ever asked at th