He was hungry and thirsty for a sight of her, he said; and his eyes bore out his words as they rested by turns on her flushed face, her little head which she had bound from the dust with a green and yellow handkerchief, her old brown skirt half covered by a black apron. Might he come and see her to-night? Where would she be? Would she be alone? When and where would she ever be alone? There was something in his face as he pressed her (she did not take it for shame) that made him look a little brutal; but his brutality was something she could exorcise. She would be waiting for him in the evening at the new house. Alone? Yes, if it could be. But he must go away now. When he had gone she fled indoors and stood for a minute in one of the empty rooms, very still and white, with her hands clasped.

Later, when all was done and she and Janet were drinking a last cup of tea in the stripped parlour, using the window-sill as a table, Mamie Boyd arrived.

“How fresh you do look!” she exclaimed as she kissed Joanna; “more as if you had been having a holiday than a flitting! But you must be feeling quite worn out all the same. I’ll wait with you as long as there’s anything to do. Mother says I’m not on any account to come home without you”

While Mamie entered into a long explanation of why she had not been able to turn up earlier, Joanna was in an unreasoning terror. Would the Boyds somehow coerce her into coming to them? The image was absurd but she could see herself being dragged by force past the door of the new house and over the bridge to High Kelvin Place.

By what excuses she managed presently to shake Mamie off she could never afterwards remember. She did it however without giving any definite promise, and almost pushed her too hospitable friend down the front steps. Soon afterwards Janet also departed, having made the feeblest of protests.

Left to herself Joanna went slowly from room to room of the empty house in a mute farewell. Here, under this roof she had spent her childhood and adolescence, and in leaving it she knew she was leaving her first youth behind. She had loved this home as well as hated it and was prepared for some emotion of melancholy on the occasion of departure. But no such sentiment would rise in her. Her spirit had already taken flight forward to a riper phase of life, and she was glad of it, and only glad. Without a single pang she took leave of the despoiled, sad walls.