Down there somewhere was Ivor, going farther away from me every moment, though last night at about this time he had been telling me how he loved me, how I was the One Girl in the world for him, and always, always would be.  Here was I, remembering in spite of myself every word he had said, hearing again the sound of his voice and seeing the look in his eyes as he said it.  There was he, going to the woman for whose sake he had been willing to break with me.

But was he going to her?  I asked myself.  If not, when they had chaffed him he might easily have mentioned what his engagement really was, knowing, as he must have known, exactly how he made me suffer.

Still—­why had he looked so miserable, if he didn’t care what I thought, and was really ready to throw me over at a call from her?  The whole thing began to appear more complicated, more mysterious than I had felt it to be at first, when I was smarting with my disappointment in Ivor, and tingling all over with the humiliation he seemed to have put upon me.

“Oh, to know, to know, what he’s doing at this minute!” I whispered, half aloud, because it was comforting in my loneliness to hear the sound of my own voice.  “To know whether I’m doing him the most awful injustice—­or not!”

Just then, at the door between my room and Lisa’s, next to mine, came a tapping, and instantly after the handle was tried.  But I had turned the key, thinking that perhaps this very thing might happen—­that Lisa might wish to come, and not wait till I’d given her permission.  She does that sort of thing sometimes, for she is rather curious and impish (Ivor calls her “Imp"), and if she thinks people don’t want her that is the very time when she most wants them.

“Oh, Di, do let me in!” she exclaimed.

For a second or two I didn’t answer.  Never in my life had I liked poor Lisa less than I’d liked her for the last four and twenty hours, though I’d told myself over and over again that she meant well, that she was acting for my good, and that some day I would be grateful instead of longing to slap her, as I couldn’t help doing now.  But always before, when she has irritated me until I’ve nearly forgotten my promise to her father (my step-father) always to be gentle with her in thought and deed, I have felt such pangs of remorse that I’ve tried to atone, even when there wasn’t really anything to atone for, except in my mind.  I was afraid that, if I refused to let her come in, she would go to bed angry with me.  And when Lisa is angry she generally has a heart attack and is ill next day.  “Di, are you there?” she called again.

Without answering, I went to the door and unlocked it.  She came in with a rush.  “I feel perfectly wild, as if I must do something desperate,” she said.

So did I, but I didn’t mean to let her know that.

“I’m going out,” she went on.  “If I don’t, I shall have a fit.”

“Out!” I repeated.  “You can’t.  It’s midnight.”