“Come, Cicely,” she said, “I’m not for bandying words with you.  The world is wide enough for both of us.  Let us live at peace towards one another, at any rate.  There’s tea coming—­poor stuff enough, but it’s city water and city milk.  You shall sit down and tell me what has brought you here, for it’s not only to see me, I guess.”

The tea was brought; they sat and discussed their plans.  Cicely had followed her sister to London, utterly unable to live any longer in a place so full of horrible memories.  They had a little money—­Cicely, almost enough to live on, but she wanted work.  Joan listened, but for her part she had little to say.  Only as the clock drew near seven o’clock she grew restless.  Her attention wandered.  She looked often towards the window.

“You’ll stay the night here anyhow, sister?” she said at last.

“Why, I’d counted on it,” Cicely admitted.

“Well, that’s settled then.  This is mostly the time I go out.  Are you going with me, or will you rest a bit?”

Cicely rose up briskly.

“I’ll come along,” she said.  “A walk will do me good.  The air’s so cruel close up here.”

Joan hesitated.

“I’m a fast walker,” she said, “and I go far.”

But Cicely, who divined something of the truth, hesitated no longer, not even for a second.

“I will come,” she said.

* * * * *

They passed out into the streets, and the younger girl knew from the first that their walk was a quest.  They chose the most frequented thoroughfares, and where the throng was thickest there only they lingered.  There was a new look in the face of the elder girl, a grim tightening of the lips, a curious doggedness about the jaws, a light in the black eyes which made her sister shudder to look upon.  For there were in Joan Strong, daughter of many generations of north country yeomen, the possibilities of tragedy, a leaven of that passionate resistless force, which when once kindled is no more to be governed than the winds.  Narrow she was, devoid of imagination, and uneducated, yet, married to the man whom she had boldly and persistently sought after, she would have been a faithful housewife, after the fashion of her kind.  But with the tragedy in her home, the desertion of the man whom she had selected for her husband, another woman had leaped into life.  Something in her nature had been touched which, in an ordinary case, would have lain dormant for ever.  Cicely knew it and was terrified.  This was her sister, and yet a stranger with whom she walked, this steadfast, untiring figure, ever with her eyes mutely questioning the passing throngs.  They had become a great way removed during these last few weeks, and, save her sister, there was no one else left in the world.  With aching feet and tears in her eyes, Cicely kept pace as well as she could with the untiring, relentless figure by her side.  Many people looked at them curiously—­the