And on the following Sunday she was finally urged to the act. A strange minister was preaching in their church. He spoke with kindling eloquence about the woman who was healed by touching Jesus in the crowd; so that suddenly Joanna, strung to an ecstasy, took her resolve. It would be more correct to say that there flashed in her in that moment the absolute knowledge that she would accomplish the deed next day.

On Monday she and Georgie passed the woman as usual. Georgie, who was holding forth on the iniquities of her form mistress, did not even glance towards the camp-stool. Nor did she look round, when, a few yards further on, Joanna murmured something unintelligible and ran back.

Now that the first step was taken, only desperation held her to her task. Her breath went from her, her lips felt parched, and as she stooped to the sightless head a clang of bells sounded in her ears. For a moment she lost all consciousness of her surroundings.

On feeling the nearness of another human being, the poor creature on the stool instinctively held up her little tin mug; and as Joanna drew back after giving the kiss, she saw this gesture. There had been no other response. The face was vacant and unlovely as ever.

Joanna felt deeply ashamed. In her self-centred anxiety about the kiss she had forgotten to bring a penny.

“I’ll bring you one tomorrow,” she assured the beggar hastily. Then turning away she sped after Georgie.

“Were you giving her a penny?” Georgie asked but without interest.

“No.”

“What were you doing then?”

“Nothing, fastening my shoe-lace. Go on with what you were saying about Miss Dunbar.”

IV

All her childhood Joanna had been a fugitive from the realities immediately surrounding her town existence, and her intenser life was lived in her flights. She had many avenues of escape; but of these the best was provided by her passion for the country.

And for her “The Country” and every one of its joys was summed up in the single word Duntarvie.

The children owed Duntarvie – which was a real place as well as Joanna’s home of dreams – to their mother. For Juley, if she yearned principally after her children’s souls, cared shrewdly too for their bodies. She would not allow them to have dancing lessons, but she believed in young legs running wild. Above all she insisted that a free country life for at least four months out of the twelve, was necessary to counteract the early delicacy of Linnet and Joanna. The old farm-house in East Perthshire had once belonged to the Erskines, though it had passed half-a-century ago into the hands of strangers. But when Joanna was five Juley learned that it was to be let, and she gave Sholto no peace till he had taken a lease of the place.