“What’s up, really?” he asked, “you’re not going to spoil everything by a silly tantrum, are you?”

Joan hadn’t the slightest appearance of temper—­she was quite at ease, apparently, though her heart almost choked her by its beating.

“You have spoiled everything,” she said, “not I. You somehow have made our play end abruptly by coming here.  I don’t think I ever can play again.  It’s like knowing there isn’t—­any—­any Santa Claus; I can’t explain.  But something has happened.  Something so awful that I cannot put it into words.”

Raymond got up and stood before Joan.  He looked down and smiled, and at that moment she knew that he was not his old self and she knew what had changed him!  And yet with the understanding a deeper emotion swept over her, one of familiarity.  It was like finding someone she had known long ago in Raymond’s place; as if she had lived through this scene before.

She summoned a latent power to deal with the new conditions.

“You pretty little thing!” Raymond whispered, and touched Joan’s shoulder.  She got up quickly and moved across the room.

“I always want light when there is a storm,” she said, and touched the switch.

Raymond, in the glare, looked flushed and impatient.  A crash of thunder shook the old house.

“Will you dance for me?” he said.

Joan stiffened—­she was dealing with the strange personality, not the man who was part of the happy past.

“No,” she said, evenly.  “And you have no right to be here.  I wish you would go at once.”

“Out in this storm, you little pagan?”

“You could go downstairs and wait in the hall.”

“You are afraid of me?”

“Not in the least.”

“Afraid of yourself, then?”

“Certainly not.  Why should I be afraid of myself?”

“Afraid for yourself, then?”

Raymond was enjoying himself hugely.

“No, but I’m a bit afraid—­for you!” Joan was watching the stranger across the room, and she shivered as peal after peal of thunder tore the brief lulls in the storm.

“Oh! that’s all right—­about me!” Raymond said, mistaking the trembling that he saw; “you know, while I was at dinner to-day I got to thinking what fools we were—­not to—­to take what fun there is in life—­and not count the costs like mean-spirited misers.  You’ve got more dash and courage than I have—­you must have thought me, many a time, a——­ What did you think me, little girl?”

With the overpowering new knowledge that was possessing her Joan spoke hesitatingly.  It seemed pitifully futile and untruthful; but her own thought was to get this stranger from her presence.

“I thought you—­well, I thought about you just as I thought about myself.  Someone who was strong enough and splendid enough to make something we both wanted come true!  It was believing that we two grown-up, lonely people could—­play—­without hurting—­anything—­or each other.  I see, now, just as I used to see when I was a little girl—­that one can never, never do that.”