Joanna promised that she would call upon Mrs. Urquhart, and an afternoon was fixed for the following week. Even while she told herself that in common courtesy she could do no less, she found herself interested suddenly in the young man’s dark irregularity of feature. Certainly his face could light up in an unexpected way.

Mildred now returned holding an open letter.

“Here it is,” she said. “Now listen, and tell me if this isn’t what you have been longing for? No, you musn’t go, Mr. Urquhart. It’s nothing private. No, indeed it isn’t. Do stay and give us your opinion.”

Lawrence, who had risen, sat down again with a glance at Joanna’s averted profile, and the letter was read out.

It offered Joanna her first chance of earning money.

A friend of the Lovatts, the manager of a leading Glasgow drapery firm, was making a new departure. He wanted something fresh in the way of catalogues, frontispieces, and advertisements generally. Designs were to be submitted. Here was the chance for young talent. Did the Lovatts know of any?

“If you think I’m good enough,” said Joanna more than doubtfully when Mildred had finished. It was indeed what she had longed for – the first step towards that independent life in London which was her dream. Yet the actual suggestion filled her chiefly with a terrified sense of incompetence. It seemed absurd that work of hers would be thought fit for reproduction and payment. How she must have imposed on people that such an idea should be for a moment considered! Now they would find her out.

Yet she knew she would try.

“Why of course you are good enough,” Mildred encouraged her. “And I hope for one design you’ll send that nice thing you were working on the other day – women dancing – I was so struck with it! I don’t wonder Val Plummer says you have a feeling for drapery.”

“What is more, Nilsson says the same,” put in Lawrence, glowing with satisfaction, and Joanna was reminded by his remark that in the three weeks since the dance the two, introduced by her, had become good friends.

So it was arranged, and Joanna found that she had agreed to send in six designs by a given time. After all, she told herself, if she failed she could kill herself!

In spite of her disappointment about Pender, of whom no word had been spoken, she trod home that afternoon on air.

V

According to her promise, Joanna set out for the Urquharts on the following Thursday afternoon: but she grudged the time. Her designs were going to take even longer than she had expected, and she was aghast at the unfinished and feeble appearance of work which unchallenged had pleased her a month before.