“They say troubles never come singly. Certainly that has been my experience these last few days. When. I got home here on Saturday evening I found my mother had taken a turn for the worse and she died on Monday. It was her heart that gave out. Then this morning your letter reached me. I am still too confused and stunned to grasp all that it means, and fortunately as I must suppose, my whole attention is still required for practical matters in connection with my mother’s death. You say I am to forget what passed between us on Saturday, as it was all a mistake on your part. Bitter as this is to me I can understand it well enough. What I cannot understand is how I ever for a moment believed it was anything but a dream. But why is it better that I should not see you again? I do not want, nor do I mean to make any appeal ad misericordiam, if that is what you are afraid of. But in the circumstances surely it is for me to decide whether or not I am to see you again on the former friendly footing? You cannot know what it is to me to see you or you would not ask this. If, as you say, you are the one in fault, how is it in your right to dictate in the matter of my small remaining claim? You say you would rather have suffered yourself than make me suffer. If this is true then let your penance be the continuance of our friendship. Perhaps I need that just now more than the other.

“Forgive me if I seem rude, and believe me,

Ever your friend,

“LAWRENCE URQUHART.”

As she read this letter, anger struggled with acknowledgement in Joanna. Somehow she was thwarted by it, belittled and punished and put down, while the writer rose suddenly to a new place in her thoughts. She had to admit his right to make her feel not so much wicked as wanton and petty: but it angered her that fate had tendered him the unexpected courage to use this right. If his mother had not died at that moment Joanna tried to tell herself he would have sent a very different message. What, she wondered with deep interest, had his mother’s death meant to him? Anyhow, she begrudged the event that had strengthened him by dealing the two blows simultaneously. Could it be then that she had coveted the sole power of dealing him pain?

In reply she wrote a formal letter of sympathy, and told him that she would be busy moving house for the next few weeks.

VIII

Through the next ten days she worked with Mamie Boyd and Janet, but harder than both of them put together. She worked harder than at any time before in her life, and far more efficiently. For the time, she put her drawings and all else aside; and from early each morning till past midnight, with hurried intervals for meals, hurled herself at the set task.