When the servants had come upstairs and were in their places near the door, Juley opened her Bible on the half-cleared tea-table, and with a short prayer that God would not let His Word return to Him void, she began to read the passage for that evening.

Joanna, with her spreading apple-green skirts crinkled as petals that are folded in a poppy bud, sat very still on the worn leather sofa, and Bob in an armchair faced her across the hearthrug. She seemed to him like an early spring flower and his eyes, young and disturbed, never left her. As for Joanna, though she gazed steadfastly aside at the crumbling coals, the young man’s presence was putting a spell upon her. The space between them vibrated unceasingly, and there was magic for both of them in the familiar, unheeded poetry the mother was reading.

Even Juley’s interpolations as she read the Bible had no power this evening to irritate her daughter; and as if knowing this, she lingered to her heart’s content on the precious phrases, explaining them to the servants, and drawing the sweetness from each word before she passed on. Poor Juley! After a day of small desperations she now came to refresh herself at God’s footstool with an eagerness that made her quite blind to what was passing beside her. Half an hour hence she would be staggering once more under her burden; but for this blessed space she was laying it aside with deep-drawn sighs of content.

“May God bless to us His holy Word. Let us pray!”

At this signal the servants rustled starchily from their seats and Joanna and Bob stood up. It was the moment Joanna then knew, for which they had both been waiting. As her mother and the servants knelt before their chairs she raised at last her full eyelids, and with his whole being Bob held her glance. It was only an instant that they stood thus, but to Joanna it seemed an age. Then Bob crossed to her side, and trembling they knelt down together at the sofa.

As soon as they knew by the modulations of her voice that Juley’s prayer was in foil flight heavenwards, the boy and girl, so far as they could for nervousness, began to look into their new situation. In her own agitation Joanna made no allowance for Bob’s, but his was the greater. She felt rather than saw that his right hand lay palm upwards close by her left elbow on the rubbed leather sofa. It lay waiting there dumb and humble for hers. She was thrilled by this, but at the same time a little spasm of disappointment passed through her. Why could not Bob take her hand simply, boldly? Was it not the man’s part? Here was she, ready at a touch to give all that could be asked for.