“Can’t you understand?” she demanded miserably. “I’ve made a fool of myself, not of you. I’ve made a stupid, dreadful mistake. You know I love only you. But I hoped — Don’t you see? —”

“No!” she exclaimed, raising her voice loudly in anger. “No. No. No!” – and she struck upon her knees with her clenched hands while the tears of utter humiliation rushed scalding from her eyes – “it’s impossible, quite impossible that you should ever understand. Idiot that I was! I see that now.”

Louis laid aside his hat and stick again with one of the curious, deliberate movements which with him marked excitement. And he sat himself down by Joanna on the sofa.

“Idiot you are!” he agreed. “But truly, Joanna, do you want me?”

“I do, Louis, you know I do. But do you want me?”

“By God! I do. O! my dear child. What a ghastly pang when I thought I’d lost you.”

He sighed deeply, boyishly. It was a great danger that was overpast; and now that she was once more against his breast and returning his kisses, it seemed as if their love, always sweet, was wonderfully enhanced. This was all they thought of. They easily refused to envisage the part played by Lawrence Urquhart in their new-found happiness. Surely they had been born for this thing, and the attempt to escape it was worse than idle? The result, whether for happiness or sorrow must be left in the hands of nature who had driven them into each other’s arms. Any penalty paid by themselves or by others was better than the denial of so strong an impulse.

At last they drew apart, and Louis said he must go. But Joanna sprang up radiant, with shining eyes and dishevelled hair.

“Wait for me one minute. I’ll walk to the station with you!”

She rushed upstairs, threw on the new coat and hat, and rejoined him within two minutes. Her lover noted with a pang that she looked a mere schoolgirl. Her cheeks were blazing.

“What! New clothes?” he exclaimed in a peculiar tone.

“You like them?”

“Very much. They are the best I’ve seen you in. But you are a mad-woman, you know. I’m not at all sure that young Urquhart isn’t well quit of you.”

VII

In the evening Joanna wrote to Lawrence. It was a longer letter than the one she had sent to Louis, and was written with labour and self-loathing. She tried to persuade herself that Lawrence would not suffer more than she had suffered with Bob. Sometimes one was made to suffer; sometimes one made others suffer: that was life. Besides, Lawrence, loving her as he did, would necessarily have suffered even if she had not given him this false promise of happiness. She had only accelerated, not created his misfortune. So she reasoned, while she filled her letter with ready-made phrases of penitence. She was “dreadfully sorry and ashamed,” her conduct had been “unforgivable.”