Had to get cool somewhere.  I’m not responsible for losing my
    breath.  Take care of yourself.

“This seems the last straw!” sobbed Joan, for Raymond had told her that day at the Brier Bush that important business was taking him out of town.

“He has to catch his breath,” poor Joan cried, miserably, quite as if her own background was eliminated; “but what of my breath?  And to-day is Saturday, and——­” The bleak emptiness of a hot Sunday in the stifling studio stretched ahead wretchedly, like a parched desert.

That night Joan pulled her shade down.  She hated the stars.  They looked complacent and distant.  She pushed memories of Doris and Nancy resolutely from her.  Her world was not their world—­that was sure.  If this desperate loneliness couldn’t drive her to them, nothing could.  She must make her own life!  Lying on her hot bed, Joan thought and thought.  Of what did she want to make her life?

“I only want a decent amount of fun,” she cried, turning her pillow over, “and I will not have strings tied to all my fun, either.”

This struck her as funny even in her misery.  She sat up in bed and counted her losses—­what were they?

Ridge House and that dear, sweet life—­sheltered and safe.  Yes; she was sure she had lost them, for she could not go back beaten before she had really tried her luck, and if she succeeded she could never have them in a sense of ownership.

“And I will succeed!” Even in that hard hour Joan rose up in arms.

“And I have earned enough to begin real work in the autumn.”  She counted her gains.  “And I can live close to Aunt Dorrie’s beautiful life even if I am not of it.  And I am sure of myself as dear Nancy never could be—­because I have proved myself in ways that girls like Nancy never can.”

Toward morning Joan fell asleep.  When she awoke it was nearly noon time and half the desert of Sunday was passed.

Then Joan, refreshed and comforted, planned a wholesome afternoon and evening.

“I’ll go out and get a really sensible dinner; take a walk in the Park, and come home and practise.  Monday will be here before I know it.”

Joan carried out her programme, and it was five o’clock when she returned, at peace with the whole world.

She took off her pretty street gown and slipped into a thin, airy little dress and comfortable sandals.  The sandals made her think of her dancing; she always wore them unless she danced shoeless.

“And before I go to bed,” she promised her gay little self, “I’ll have a dance to prove that nothing can down me—­for long!

“I wonder—­” here Joan looked serious as if a thought wave had struck her—­“I wonder where Pat is?”

This seemed a futile conjecture.  Patricia was too elusive to be followed, even mentally.

As a matter of fact, Patricia was, at that hour, confronting the biggest question of her life.