With the natural end of her mourning for Mario, Joanna had become in a perfectly fresh way conscious of the outside world. She had seemed to re-enter life like one new-born, and now for the first time was experiencing the vigour of her youth. A shadow and a burden were lifted, a film taken from her eyes. She was able now to interpret the sense of escape that had come to her in the train as she left Florence, and she understood more fully why her heart had almost broken with thankfulness by the lakeside as the rondinelli took their flight from her hand. She was not merely a woman reprieved, but a woman awakened.

Even now she could not at all times identify herself with this new, intoxicating, workaday world, which for so long she had disdained in favour of dreams. The other people who were in it, and part of it, must see through her, she often fancied, guessing her no true-born inhabitant. But she did not want to be an alien. She had given herself readily to its refreshingly tangible complexities, and quickly she made a place for herself in it, a place where her mother could not follow her.

Acquaintances she now had in flocks. People of course knew her story and rejoiced in it. Her looks were in keeping with romance. She was everywhere received with a mixture of sympathy and envy which was delicately flattering. She talked with shy eagerness, listened reverently, admired, and with encouragement, criticized. For her the most ordinary social event in this unknown world was highly coloured. She might well have been eighteen instead of twenty-four.

And alongside of this enlargement, without making any special effort, she had surprised herself by acquiring the habit of work. She was making real progress, and in a quiet way had become a figure at the School of Art. The masters were on friendly terms with her: the students discussed her clothes and her features. It was astonishing how much livelier her pencil had become, and she had a passionate appreciation of drapery. Her ambition was to earn her own living – some day to go to London.

But by Juley every step of this social and artistic advance was subtly opposed. It was a strange, unremitting conflict. The more the mother perceived the daughter’s gifts, the more desperately she deplored any little worldly success the girl might have. There was unscrupulous warfare between them.

And with this result: that Joanna was spurred on her way far more steadily by the discouragement at home than by all the easily elicited praise outside. Both were useful; but even when it irked her most, the true stimulant lay in the handicap her mother was to her, and obscurely she knew this.