he said,
"let us make it up again for the time being. It is all rather absurd,
and you have got to get back to town somehow or other."

He helped her into the car with just his usual solicitude, tucking the
rug round her and laying the pile of roses on her lap; but on the way
home he was very silent and from the moment they started till the time
came for saying good-bye he did not speak a word to her.

As they stood together, while Joan was opening the door with her latch
key, he put his hand for a moment over hers.

"Good-bye, Pierrette," he said, "I am sorry you won't have anything to
do with me. I should have made you happy and given you a good time.
Sometimes it is a pity to aim too high; you are apt to miss things
altogether."

Fanny was waiting in Joan's room when she got back, tucked up in her
favourite position in the arm-chair. She had been away for the last ten
days on one of her periodical trips. "My!" she gasped, disentangling
herself to greet the other; "what roses, honey! Straight from the
country, aren't they, and a car--I can hear it buzzing outside. Is it
your young man?" She paused on the thought tip-toe with excitement, her
eyes studying Joan across the flowers she had seized. "And is he
straight? the other sort won't do for you; you would hate yourself in a
week."

Joan subsided on to the bed, taking off her hat with hands that shook
over the task.

"No," she answered, "he is not straight, Fanny; but it doesn't matter,
because I have finished with him. Take away the flowers with you, will
you? they seem to have given me a headache."

Fanny dropped the roses in a shower and trod them under foot as she ran
to Joan. "He has hurt you;" she spoke fiercely, flinging her arms round
the other girl. "God, how I hate men at times! He has hurt you, honey."

"Only my pride," Joan admitted; but the tears so long held back came in
a flood now; she laid her head down on Fanny's shoulder and sobbed and
sobbed.

The other girl waited till the storm had passed; then she rose to her
feet and bundling the roses together with an aggressive movement opened
the door and flung them out into the passage.

"I have got an idea," she said; "you have been about fed up with office
for months past. Well, why not chuck it? Come with me. I have got a job
in a show that is going on tour next week. There is room in the chorus,
I know; come with me, won't you?"

Her earnestness made Joan laugh. "What shall I come as, Fann