On waking, which she did immediately afterwards, the child was first conscious of immense relief that no such return need in reality be feared. “For,” said she to herself in that conscienceless moment, “we can do as we please now he is gone.” But with complete awakening, all and more than all the repulsion of her dream turned upon herself. How could she have acted so wickedly in sleep, thought so unkindly on waking? She lay listening to her mother’s quiet breathing, picturing her mother’s eyes and Georgie’s, could they have seen into her unloving mind. And for days afterwards, until she had done penance, her heart was heavy.

III

The opportunity for penance came in this way.

On the road to school, Georgie and Joanna had to pass a wind-swept corner where a disfigured woman sat all day on a camp stool. Slung from her neck was a stout piece of cardboard on which the words KIND FRIENDS I AM BLIND had been scrawled. And sometimes – though their father had always condemned what he called “unorganized,” “indiscriminate,” or “spurious” charity, particularly in any case so clearly marked as this one was for the Blind Asylum of which he was a director – one of the girls would slip a penny into the beggar’s hand. Once Georgie had spoken to her, asking if she had any children at home, and Joanna had been smitten by the toneless negative of the reply. “Do you think anybody ever kisses her?” she asked her sister after they had walked on some way in silence.

“I don’t expect so,” had been Georgie’s answer. And as an afterthought – “She wouldn’t be very nice to kiss, would she?”

It could not be denied. Even while Joanna was feeling obscurely something of that strangest envy of the human soul – the envy of utter misfortune – she shuddered at the thought of touching the afflicted face with her lips. Yet she was sure she ought to. The unkissed woman with the terribly prominent, closed eyelids persisted in her imagination. Night after night, when the figure of sorrowful censure visited her bedside, she said to herself – “to-morrow I will do it. Tomorrow I will make myself kiss her!” But day after day, passing to and from school, she had shrunk from the deed which the night before had seemed so possible and right. And gradually she was becoming used to the denial.

Under the fresh reproach of her dream, however, Joanna conceived of this kiss, so long withheld, as the appointed expiation. At nights she had anguished moments in which her father on one hand and the blind woman on the other levelled at her an accusation the less tolerable for being unspoken.