Assuredly it would have been difficult to find anything in greater contrast to the quiet, sad-coloured life at Collessie Street, with its intense spiritual currents, than this household of Sans Souci.

CHAPTER TWO

I

I’ve got Louis Pender (you know his work, of course) coming here unexpectedly for the week-end, and as there is a students’ dance at the School to-morrow night, I thought we might go on there after dinner with our little party. Will you be one of us? Do. We dine at a quarter to eight. Don’t answer, but come.“

On the morning of the day appointed for Miss Gedge’s meeting, the post brought Joanna this invitation from Mrs. Lovatt, and she read it through in a growing distraction.

It seemed to her that she had never before wanted so much to accept an invitation as she did now; and a malignant fate had fixed the affair at St. Saviour’s for seven o’clock that same night! She would know better another time than to let herself be nagged into giving her word.

But in the same moment Joanna took her resolution. Come what might, she would be at Mildred’s at a quarter to eight; and she would be there if possible without having broken the promise to her mother. How this was to be done, she did not yet know. She only knew that a way must be found.

True, this was the first time in her life that she had heard of Louis Pender. And under Nilsson’s influence she was becoming less impressible by Mildred’s celebrities. True, also, the little dancing she knew had been picked up during playhours at school, and she had never been to a dance. But at this moment she could imagine nothing more desirable on earth than that she should meet this man with the pleasant name at dinner, and go to the dance afterwards. She wanted to dance, even should she not have the courage to accept a partner for anything but a reel or a set of lancers, in either of which she felt secure.

She looked again at the letter.

“Also, as an experiment,” wrote Mrs. Lovatt in her slap-dash hand-writing, “I have asked that young Mr. Urquhart whom you may remember in our Italian class. In spite of his appalling shyness, I gather he remembers you. I discovered him to-day having tea at the Tullises’. It seems Professor T. thinks well of him as a budding anthropologist.”

And there was a postscript, telling that Louis Pender was in Glasgow as the possible painter of some panels in the City Chambers, about which there had been some talk of late.

Yes: Joanna was determined to go that evening to Panmure Crescent; but how was it to be done?

Quite apart from the St. Saviour’s complication, she well knew that the dinner could only have been achieved by great skill, and the dance by deceit or open rebellion. In all these things her mother’s will was set hard against her. And there was the particular promise besides!