h of you; I know that it is hurting you, too,
but when you have wilfully or inadvertently killed a person's belief in
you the only thing you can do is to keep out of their way. Time is the
one healer for such wounds."

The tears smarted in Joan's eyes, yet up till now she had not cried
once. Hurt pride, hurt love, struggled for expression, but words seemed
so useless.

"I had better hurry up and get away," she said; "I suppose Aunt Janet
hates the thought of my being near her even."

Miss Abercrombie watched her with kindly eyes. The tragedy she had
suspected on the first night was worse even than she had imagined. It
stared at her out of the old, fierce face upstairs, it slipped into her
thoughts of what this girl's future was going to be.

"Have you made any plans?" she asked; "do you know at all where to go?"

"Does it matter very much?" Joan answered bitterly.

"My dear," Miss Abercrombie spoke gently, "I am making no attempt to
criticize, and I certainly have no right to judge, but you have a very
hard fight before you and you will not win through if you go into it in
that spirit. I do not want to ask questions, you would probably resent
them, but will you tell me one thing. Does the man know about what is
going to happen?"

"No," answered Joan. "It wouldn't make any difference if he did. It is
not even as if he had persuaded me to go and live with him; I want you
to understand that I went of my own free will because I thought it was
right."

"You will write and tell him," suggested Miss Abercrombie. "That is only
fair to him and yourself."

"No," Joan said again, "it was the one thing he was most afraid of; I
would not stoop to ask him to share it with me."

Miss Abercrombie put out a quick hand. "You are forgetting that now
there is someone else who is dependent on how you fight and whether you
win through. You may say, 'I stand alone in this,' yet there is someone
else who will have to share in paying the cost."

The colour swept from Joan's cheek; she choked back the hard lump in her
throat. "We will have to pay it together," she said. "I cannot ask
anyone else to help."

The tears, long held back, came then and she turned away quickly. Miss
Abercrombie watched her in silence for a minute or two. At last she
spoke. "You poor thing," she said slowly and quietly; "you poor, foolish
child."

Joan turned to her quickly. "You are thinking that I am a coward," she
said, "that I am making but a poor b