Leaving Lawrence on their entrance, Joanna ran to her bedroom and threw off her hot and dusty outer clothes. Her thin dresses were already packed, so she had nothing to put on saving one of the holland smocks she wore for working. But no garment she had was more becoming to her, a fact which had more than once been pointed out by Louis. Assuredly in the cool, pleated linen, when she had laved her face, and doubled up her hair anew, she felt a different creature.

The young man gave a little start of joy as she came into the sitting-room. But his only spoken comment was that she looked “nice and cool.”

For a while they talked of the heat. Then – “You know what I said yesterday …?” questioned Lawrence abruptly, … “that about having no more use for the back-waters?”

Yes. Joanna remembered.

“It was you helped me to it,” he said quietly, only his breathing playing him false. “ … I wanted to tell you that. You helped so tremendously. You have always stood for the real world which I would have hidden from if I could.”

Joanna wondered in all honesty how this could be. “I’ve always been in such a dream myself,” she declared, “ … till quite lately.”

“Perhaps …” – he winced a little – “ … I don’t know about lately. But that first evening at Mrs. Lovatt’s house at dinner. You seemed a different person from the one in old Cellebrini’s class. You had got away, really away … didn’t belong any more to Glasgow. You hadn’t been just travelling or sight-seeing like the others. How I admired the way you had escaped … it was something I needed so badly and had so little courage for. Couldn’t we start being friends from now?” he ended abruptly.

“We might …” she allowed. But she hesitated.

“You seem to grudge it,” his voice was sharp. “If you knew how I need … what happiness it would mean to me …”

“That’s exactly it,” Joanna interrupted him quickly. “I do believe we might be friends if only it weren’t a thing you thought you needed to make you happy. Don’t you see?”

“No. I don’t think I do see.” He was taken aback.

“I mean, surely happiness has to be in ourselves if it is to be any use at all? I’ve thought such a lot about this lately,” said she with growing eagerness. “If your happiness is in the hands of other people, or of any circumstances whatever, it is really only misery. If you were happy in yourself now, it would be all right. We could be friends and get pleasure out of it. Otherwise I don’t see the good.”