That Louis might refuse a demand at once so imperious and so reasonable as this seemed to her she would hardly admit. He must see clearly that it was no more than her right. Hers was the ultimate undertaking, his only whatever share in the responsibility he freely desired. To any other view she closed her eyes.

At the same time, even in her exaltation, some instinct warned Joanna to go cautiously to work. Men were so strange. One never knew with what unexpected, incomprehensible prejudice a man might regard so perfectly straightforward a matter. And she was in this man’s power. With every logical and passionate argument on her side, he could yet deny her the one vital thing left in life. This made her very wary, and she waited for her moment without saying a word to him of what filled her mind. Sometimes she thought he looked at her curiously.

IIΙ

But one day in the Christmas holidays, when Georgie’s baby was three months old, the sisters planned a shopping expedition on his behalf. Already he was growing out of all his clothes and would presently be ready for short-coating.

The night before, Joanna had lain long awake thinking and thinking of her mother. Was it after all her death that had changed the face of the world? Was it not rather the manner of her death? She had gone without once attaining the full stature of her soul, without once uttering clearly the word it should have been hers to utter. With all her struggles, her nobility, her sacrifices, she was unfulfilled. She was like the sides of an arch that fall in together in a heap because the key-stone is missing. Yet who had faith if not she? What had been wrong?

All at once Joanna turned in accusation upon her dead father. In spite of the unkind childish dream she had kept his memory all these years as of some one good beyond question, almost god-like. Nor had Juley ceased to foster to the last this ideal image in her children’s minds. But now this with other security was gone from life; and in that quiet midnight hour Joanna asked herself if he was not greatly to be blamed. Was it not their father who had failed them all? Was the keystone of the arch of fulfilment not placed in the hands of the male?

She condemned him pitilessly, as only a woman can condemn a parent. It had all been wrong, that apparently happy and peaceful marriage – wrong from beginning to end. There had been no beginning and no end. There had been only a confused and accidental issue of wrongness, of which she, Joanna, was a part. She remembered the words – “In sin did my mother conceive me.” Why not – “In sin did my father beget me”? And in her very bones she could feel at work that reward of sin which is death.