And there in another corner of the wall was the carpentry shed, which looked sad since Sholto’s departure to a farm in the Lothians where he was learning stock-breeding. Joanna wished that Sholto could have stayed at home instead of Linnet. She and Linnet depressed each other; and the sister felt a kind of horror at seeing her own faults so clearly emphasized in her brother. She was ignorant of the real current of his life, and, in all but superficial ways, the two had come to avoid each other, seeking help outside in different directions.

Suddenly the tears started to Joanna’s eyes, and her high-strung fury changed to simple dreariness. Through these childish memories called forth by the sight of the back-green, and these thoughts of the nearer past, she had completed a circle of emotion. Once more she was confronted by her immediate trouble, the trouble concerning her mother. And for a moment she tasted despair.

Almost three years, now, she had been at home; and it had come to this. She had got no farther than this in fulfilling her dream of daughterhood by the fish-ponds of Vallombrosa. In practice she could not be the daughter of these dreams. Still less could she be the daughter her mother so passionately wanted. Why was it? Many times she had asked herself that question, and now she stumbled against it again. She loved her mother: her mother loved her. The dream at Vallombrosa had at least had that much of truth. And all the time in Florence she had known herself spiritually involved with her mother in some inexplicable way. Then why, when they were under the same roof, was there this unending conflict between them? Whose fault was it?

Chafed and puzzled as she was by this questioning, Joanna was well accustomed to it, and had her own way of escape, which she presently took. Just as before her marriage she had constantly taken refuge in a world of dreams, so now, shaken awake by the vivid, physical experience with Mario, she fled outwards to embrace the newly discovered actual. Well she knew her way out. Had she not trodden it these three years a thousand times? So the unfallen tears soon dried in her eyes, and before the last cup was put away she was once more entirely absorbed in thoughts of the lunette she had to finish for Mr. Nilsson’s class next day. Mr. Nilsson, her favourite master, what would he say about it? Thank Heaven she had her work.