Several times over Joanna read this notice, and now all her longing was to discover whether one of the two rooms might be that above the archway. But so fearful was she of disappointment that she remained a full minute nerving herself for it. She stared at the card, at the discreetly elegant urn of polished stone against which the card was propped, at the three words – Funerals, Cremations, Embalmings – which, engraved in gilt upon some oak panelling, formed a chaste back-ground for the urn. Clearly a superior sort of undertaker’s, this. Here were no brittle but imperishable wreaths under glass shades, no vaunting that Pinking and Kilting were done on the premises, no china scrolls bearing in black lettering the motto – “Lost, but not forgotten.” Reformed Funerals was the reticent announcement across its plate-glass front; and the dark grey urn, veined with a yet darker grey, was the only decoration.

Her courage in hand, Joanna entered Chapel Court and looked round it. How Louis would approve of this! Some children played across the cheerful paved slope which was raised on one side above the level of the few little shops so that one would have to go down two or three steps to enter them. They were very small shops, like toy ones – a little newsyendor’s, a little barber’s, a little public house called The Bird in Hand. A washing fluttered from a sort of roof-garden, where somebody had every reason to be proud of the petunias, perhaps still more of the nasturtiums. And the room over the archway had a window looking into the court as well. If only she might show it as her own to Louis on Monday!

For till Monday she was not to see him. He was out of town till then. And it was a relief. On the threshold of her new life in London such a trembling had taken her. Louis in Glasgow she knew. But would Louis in London be the same man? Would he find her the same woman? Much, she felt, depended on their first meeting. Suppose it were unfortunate, one of their failures? Suppose in London he no longer liked the look of her? Coming along the streets that afternoon she had been studying the women with an almost painful concentration of inquiry. They had a look, a something that she lacked, and she felt sure her lover admired that something. If only she were certain, quite certain of what he felt for her!

As she searched for number five in the court, she recalled carefully the last talk between them.

“Do you love me?” she had asked, and in the pause that followed, would gladly have withdrawn her question. But it was uttered now. No help for it! And she had waited miserably, furious with herself and with him.