e to say 'Yah.'"

"Unless it all comes right in the end," she added musingly; "and the poor
old soul pegs out. I wouldn't give much for her liver."

"That's not bringing me up well," suggested Joan: "putting those ideas
into my head."

"Oh, well, one can't help one's thoughts," explained Flossie. "It would
be a blessing all round."

They had risen. Joan folded her hands. "Thank you for your scolding,
ma'am," she said. "Shall I write out a hundred lines of Greek? Or do
you think it will be sufficient if I promise never to do it again?"

"You mean it?" said Flossie. "Of course you will go on seeing
him--visiting them, and all that. But you won't go gadding about, so
that people can talk?"

"Only through the bars, in future," she promised. "With the gaoler
between us." She put her arms round Flossie and bent her head, so that
her face was hidden.

Flossie still seemed troubled. She held on to Joan.

"You are sure of yourself?" she asked. "We're only the female of the
species. We get hungry and thirsty, too. You know that, kiddy, don't
you?"

Joan laughed without raising her face. "Yes, ma'am, I know that," she
answered. "I'll be good."

She sat in the dusk after Flossie had gone; and the laboured breathing of
the tired city came to her through the open window. She had rather
fancied that martyr's crown. It had not looked so very heavy, the thorns
not so very alarming--as seen through the window. She would wear it
bravely. It would rather become her.

Facing the mirror of the days to come, she tried it on. It was going to
hurt. There was no doubt of that. She saw the fatuous, approving face
of the eternal Mrs. Phillips, thrust ever between them, against the
background of that hideous furniture, of those bilious wall papers--the
loneliness that would ever walk with her, sit down beside her in the
crowded restaurant, steal up the staircase with her, creep step by step
with her from room to room--the ever unsatisfied yearning for a tender
word, a kindly touch. Yes, it was going to hurt.

Poor Robert! It would be hard on him, too. She could not help feeling
consolation in the thought that he also would be wearing that invisible
crown.

She must write to him. The sooner it was done, the better. Half a dozen
contradictory moods passed over her during the composing of that letter;
but to her they seemed but the unfolding of a single thought. On one
page it might have been his mother wr