Then, as she still searched the album, an idea blazed in her mind. She would learn Italian! Why had she never thought of it before? The word Italy had always held for her even more than the ordinary measure of romance. Juley’s eyes had lightened when she talked to her children of Italy, much as they lightened when she talked of Heaven. Grandpapa Erskine, with his generous theory of education, had taken his motherless daughters, while still in their teens, to Rome. In Rome he had accepted the charge of the Presbyterian church, and had begun to write his life of Hildebrand. In adoption, he had died. There were cousins of Joanna’s in Italy of whom she knew very little. Gerald had sisters, while another Erskine – Aunt Minnie – was married to a Frenchman, and had a large family at Turin. They never came to England; but they sent cards and photographs at Christmas-time, giving glimpses of a life wonderfully different from the life in Glasgow.

And now had come this voice from Italy, claiming Joanna out of all the connection as a kindred spirit. Surely it was the voice of life! Surely she would answer it! And to begin with, would go to the Italian class at the University. The session was just beginning. She would go to Gilmorehill to make sure, that very afternoon.

II

Still enlivened with her thoughts she approached one of the southern entrances of the park through which she was going to the University, and there it came upon her with surprise that she was walking amid beauty. The October day was yielding up its breath in faint, dun-coloured vapours, and the poor and harsh outlines of this region had borrowed for the time an appealing loveliness. Church-spires – St Jude’s among them – and tall houses, mysterious at their bases, rose triumphantly through the sullied lower air to the serenely brooding blue above, where they seemed suspended. And away to the left on its hill, dominating the park, the Gothic University stood high and black and alien against the sky.

Before entering by the wide iron gates, Joanna paused to look. Here too all was clothed with the magic of the hour. By day, a squalid, railed enclosure where growing things found a precarious life, the park showed itself now as a place of wonder, a dim paradise, which, as the evening deepened, would become murmurous with lovers.

In her full response, the girl drew an audible breath of delight and entered. After all it was good at this moment just to be alive, just to breathe. The desire came upon her for liberated movement – the deep-set human longing for wings. If only one could flit, swift and noiseless through the haze. She glanced behind her. It was barely the hour for lovers. No one was in sight.