Yet in itself it was grave enough. On the division of the Bannerman estate, Linnet had had to confess to speculative follies of long standing. Only by foregoing the greater part of their portions, would the girls and the absent Sholto be able to meet their brother’s debts and prevent his public disgrace. And this done, Mr. Boyd, as their mother’s trustee, their father’s friend, and Linnet’s employer, insisted seriously on the expediency of Linnet’s leaving Glasgow with the least possible delay.

Linnet himself, rather to eveybody’s surprise, made no objection. Sholto, he declared, had long ago invited his coming to Australia, and he was not forced to assume that Mr. Boyd had anything to do with the prompt but hearty renewal of that invitation which he now received by cable.

Joanna saw him off. To the end he maintained an admirable show of unconcern. He had been deucedly unfortunate, said his manner. And though his sister could not meet his eyes because of that in them which so belied his words, she had to love him for his refusals, to pay him tribute in that he neither cringed nor broke down.

Seeing her brother on the deck of his ship, waving his hat to her in farewell, and with his narrow, finely cut head bare against the grey morning sky, Joanna was confronted yet again with her most familiar image. Like a key the master symbol of her life heretofore was put into her hand ….

“Ev’n as a bird

Out of the fowler’s snare

Escapes away

So is our soul set free!”

CHAPTER THREE

I

When the ugly flutter of death had subsided, Joanna with. mounting terror discovered that her world was changed. The mask of stability had been stripped from outward things. Inherent deathliness was everywhere made visible. Even her own firm self seemed to be crumbling within her.

Desperately, and with every subtlety at her command, she fought against the dissolution which threatened on her return to London. She kept the outer shell of her existence intact – the shell composed of work, duties, human contacts, the care of her room, her clothes, her body. And because all meaning had gone from these components – because her work (though there was more need now than at any former time, that she should bestir herself in making a livelihood) was loathsome to her, and seemed particularly useless – this was a kind of heroism.

Unhappily it was a heroism that demanded all her strength and emptied her of real courage. Under the strain of keeping up appearances her resolve to force a choice upon Louis melted quite away. Instead she turned frantically to him for help. Louis had never lied to her, thought she, never pretended. He had been frank in disbelief. In him might she not find at least a foothold of sure ground amid this quaking bog of death?