She recalled the little constraint that had arisen between Bob and herself during his last school holidays in Glasgow. How clearly she was able to re-live it! They had started romping, as in the old childish days; but Bob’s touch on her had brought a giddiness. He had tried to snatch a sketch-book from her; and she, half pretending, half really shy of letting him see her drawings, had fought to keep it. They had wrestled for it – Bob grunting with laughter when in the tussle they upset a small table covered with books – until he got her pinned against the wall and she had to own herself beaten. A tremor of pleasure went through her now at the feeling of his yellow tousled head, so near to hers as it had been, and his red, laughing triumphant face. There had come a sudden steadiness into his blue eyes, as if he had observed something new in her or in himself. Then his eyelids with their pale lashes like veils had drooped, and he had let her arms go. She had felt like water that runs swiftly over an edge of rock, that shivers in mid-air before falling in a shaken dazzle of delight down into nothingness.

And now she was to see him again.

On the evening he was expected, she spent a long time over her dressing. She took a hot bath – everything must be perfect, and though it was only Wednesday, she put on every stitch clean. She hoped Bob would not think her dress too odd. She had designed and made it herself at the School of Art, and it was of thin crinkly apple-green silk quite untrimmed. She could not help feeling elated when she ran into her mother’s room to see herself in the long wardrobe glass. She felt sure the narrow apple-green ribbon looked well round her hair, but it was a trial that her cheeks became so easily scarlet. She was thankful Mabel was not to be in that night. And the boys had gone to Aunt Ellen’s for Easter. There would only be her mother.

While still in her mother’s room Joanna heard the doorbell ring, and she listened throbbing while the visitor hung up his hat and crossed the tiled lobby to the parlour at the back of the house. How was she to go down – to enter the room?