Though she despised herself for it, and had little enough money to spare from necessities, she would put down the preposterous fee eagerly for the false excitement it brought – would wait trembling in the frowsy antechamber of the oracle. And once, when some hag of the Edgware Road hinted at what might be construed into a marriage, after many years, with Louis, she went home with a lighter step – to know within the hour that it was a shameful drug.

This however did not prevent her from repeating the same folly, and she continued fitfully to go from one soothsayer to another.

“I see a dark … no, a fair man …” droned the sibyl, (This time she was rich in her appointments, and herself young, large and comely as a stalled ox.) … “I see a medium fair man … still young … yes … the first love … his thoughts are toward you … there was a break … both were in fault … years have passed … but he has been faithful … and now his heart is set toward his first love … I see happiness … money … children … two boys … no … a boy and a girl … seas to be crossed … many storms in the past … but happiness close at hand!” She sank back in her chair as if utterly exhausted, drew the black velvet over her glass ball and closed her eyes.

And Joanna was impressed.

During the last fortnight Bob Ranken had continually sought her company. Noticing her drooping spirits, he had insisted more than once upon her going out with him to dinner in town and had taken her to a theatre afterwards. And that very afternoon, on her return to Chapel Court, she met him coming dejectedly away after a vain call there. In a week he would be leaving England. So she had to allow him to turn back with her, and to sit talking in her room. She had only to look at him to know how very easily she might make the crystal-gazer’s prophecy come true.

She was tempted. She did not love Bob, but he had still the power to stir a curious tenderness in her. Also it was dangerously sweet and flattering, especially coming upon the heels of such humiliation as could hardly be borne, to have stumbled upon the fulfilment of an old dream. After all these years, Bob wanted her. There would not only be safety with him, but as well a kind of newness which promised much. What of the mountain he could see from his bungalow … the African veld … different skies … dark faces … yet another escape? And with Bob, however fond a wife she might become, she knew that she would be able to keep her essential being intact, a shrine for Louis to the end.

But Joanna’s will, which had so often served her badly, served her well in this; and that day she put the temptation aside. Better never be than be so falsely, foisting at the same time falseness upon another.