More than once during her errands there she asked herself what she was doing. She had no remembrance of having planned this. It was as though she were blindly carrying out the orders of another. But in one place there was a clock which pointed to half-past seven, and straight on that panic seized her. Louis, if he got no further message, was to be with her soon after eight, to sup with her. This sudden knowledge, as it seemed, sent her hastening toward home again. The parcels she had bought kept slipping precariously through her trembling fingers.

“I can still change my mind,” she told herself as she plodded back in an agony to the house, – “or something may have prevented him so that he won’t come – in any case I have only to tell him to go,” and a wild aloof amusement shot through her at the thought that she might simply not open the door if he came.

But on her return to the Quadrant where the house was the last in a short, blind row, she saw that some one stood there. Her heart thudded sickly. In spite of the uncertain light, she recognized the figure of Mrs. Boyd, Mrs. Boyd!

She had only to walk on, to call out, and she was saved! But she neither spoke nor went forward. Instead she retreated with bird-like swiftness into a lane immediately upon her right, and there waited and watched, thanking the dim stars that the arrival had been during her absence from the house. Had she been in she must have been caught.

Meanwhile the old lady, after gazing reproachfully at the dark windows from the pavement, reascended the steps and rang the door-bell with vigour. Joanna heard it screech in its socket, once, twice; and between whiles she heard the visitor’s knuckles rapping sharply upon the glass pane of the door. Almost five minutes passed, and the girl in hiding, though her reason told her it was a merely a question of waiting, was half dead with fear.

At last Mrs. Boyd gave it up and walked slowly away, passing the nearer end of Joanna’s lane, and now and then looking back as if she still expected the house to give some sign. And Joanna pressed her body closer against the wall and kept quite still.

No sooner had she drawn a breath freely, than heavy footsteps coming up the lane from the far side struck a fresh terror into her. It was a policeman. He looked curiously at her as he passed, only seeing her face as a pale triangle beneath her hat, and under his official glance she clutched her purchases as if they were stolen goods. Her fingers were stiff with the dragging strings, and the wet stalks of a bunch of anemones had soaked through her gloves.