Yet they had not been lovers a week before she knew this same Louis powerless to direct their love’s course. It was like being at sea with a companion whose sole idea of seamanship was to let drift. She could not easily grasp what was the truth, that to Louis also, because of her being as she was, their situation was essentially without precedent. Still less did she understand – albeit she was compelled to act upon it – the curious fact that Louis was clutching like a drowning man at her spiritual certitude. It was essentially the same movement as that made thirty years earlier by Sholto her father towards Juley her mother.

But if Louis in himself was Joanna’s fascinating symbol for the greatly coveted world of mammon down the ages, there was that in the contingencies of their coming together which answered with equal strength to the opposite need of her nature. He was not merely the fruit, he was forbidden: therefore in partaking she gratified her lust for rebellion and for sacrifice, for rejection of and by the world. This it was which had stirred in her long ago when she kissed the blind woman. But now the two opposing passions, the high barbarian pride of life and the deep Christian pride of humiliation, were mounting together to fulfilment. All the long contact with her lover was coloured by them. It was the first that held sway over her imagination. It was the second that vitally governed her actions. The second too insinuated itself like some exquisite drug into every sensual abandonment (not for nothing is it that the most desperate of sinners are the quickest to comprehend Christ’s message).

And thus from the beginning she was careless of discovery. She wished if possible to spare her mother, and to this end, as also for convenience, could lie and scheme without scruple. But really she was indifferent to outside opinion, and it was probably this indifference that was answerable for the unfailing success of her schemes and her lies. Confidences apart, if one is at no pains to keep the truth from people they will scarcely ever suspect it.

True, there was something in Carl Nilsson’s looks that betrayed him as a possible exception. But of this Joanna was glad. She often longed to speak to him of her life and her strange solitude; but his own discretion kept her mouth shut. Phemie she would have told, had Phemie been in Glasgow; but the information could not be committed to writing, and there was no one else in whom she wanted to confide.