“Yes, Pat, of course!”

There was a long pause, the consciousness was seeking something to which it might cling.  Something forever eluding it.

A day or two later Cameron brought the dog into the sick room.  Joan turned as she heard steps.

“Cuff!” she cried and then, as the dog leaped on to her, she sobbed and murmured over and over:  “Pat’s little Cuff; Pat’s little Cuff.”

Her way on ahead was safer after that—­safer but more secretive.

As Joan got control of her thoughts she became more silent and watchful.  She questioned the nurse and found out where she was and how long she had been there; she smiled with her old touch of humour when she was called Miss Lamb but gave thanks that she had a name not her own!

She regarded Cameron with deep gratitude, but drove him to a corner by insisting that he tell her how much she owed him.

Cameron, having her purse under lock and key, at home, told her she owed the hospital fifty dollars.

At that Joan laughed, and the sound gave Cameron more hope than he had known for some time, but it seemed to mark, also, Joan’s complete self-control.

Often she lay for hours with closed eyes and wondered with a bit of self-pity why she had not been discovered?  Had she so completely dropped from the lives of those she loved that they had forgotten her?  She did not know, for some time to come, of the letters to her that were returned to The Gap!  She was never to know, fully, the anguish that Doris Fletcher was enduring in her mistaken determination not to hamper the girl who was testing her strength.

While David Martin rated her for ingratitude and carelessness; while Nancy’s face set in resentment and disapproval, Doris smiled and insisted that she would not judge until Joan explained.

“Of course,” she added, “if anything were really wrong Joan or Patricia would write.  They are probably away on business—­and at the worst they will soon let me know when to expect them.  Joan was always a poor correspondent.”

“Would you like to have me go to Chicago?” Martin asked.

“David, would you go if—­it were your boy?” Doris hung on his answer.

“I jolly well wouldn’t!  I’d let the scamp learn the whole lesson.”

“Very well, then I do not want you to go to Chicago!”

Joan, slowly recovering, could hardly have explained to herself why she was so secretive, but more and more she determined not to go to The Gap and open her heart to Doris until she was able to command the situation.  Since she had, for some reason, dropped from their lives, she would wait.  Meanwhile, her heart ached with the pity of it all.

She wondered how the name of Lamb had ever been attached to her, and finally she decided to ask Cameron about it.

It was Cameron’s custom, now, to delay his call upon Joan until late afternoon.  When he was on his way to dinner he took a half hour or more to sit beside her bed and indulge in various emotions.