Flowers filled the vases, and there was a small, fragrant fire on the hearth—­a mere thing of beauty, there was no need of it, for the windows were open to the gentle spring day.

Joan slipped into a loose gown and then stood in the middle of the room leisurely taking in the comfort and joy of every proof of love that she saw.

On the desk by the window lay a pile of unopened letters—­she took them up.  They were the letters from Doris and Nancy which had been returned from Chicago.  Pitiful things that had been so hopefully sent forth only to come back like blighted hopes!

For a moment Joan contemplated throwing them all on the fire.  She did not feel equal to re-living the past.  It was only by laughing and singing that she could hold her own.

But on second thought she opened the first one—­it was from Nancy.

“I better have all I can get to begin on,” she reflected; “it will save time.”

She sat down in a deep chair and presently she was aware of combating something that was being impressed upon her; she was not conscious of reading it.

“Such things do not happen—­not in life——­” her sane, cautious self seemed to say.  For a second Joan believed her tired brain was playing her false as it had during those awful weeks in the hospital.  She closed her eyes; grew calm—­then tried again: 

    Since you are not coming to see Ken now, Joan, I will try to
    describe him.  You remember old Mrs. Tweksbury?  Well, my dear boy
    belongs, in a way, to her——­

Again Joan closed her eyes while a faintness saved her from too acute shock.  She felt the soft air upon her face; she was conscious of that bewildered whine of poor Cuff.  Vaguely she thought that he must be hungry; thirsty—­then there was a moment’s blank and—­the sickening weakness was gone!

With the strength and clarity that sometimes comes at a critical moment Joan’s mind worked fast and carried her where hours of quiet thought could not have done.

It was natural, of course, that Nancy should meet Raymond—­the most natural thing in the world.

His loving her—­so soon after what had happened!  That was the thing that gripped and hurt.  Joan tried to connect the date of that night in the studio and the one on Nancy’s letter.  She seemed powerless to do so—­the time between was a blank; there was no time!  Everything belonged to a previous incarnation.

With a shudder, Joan presently realized the insignificant part she had borne in Kenneth Raymond’s life.

The humiliation turned her hot and cold.  He had always held but one opinion of her; his loss of self-control had simply torn down the defences behind which he had played with her, amused himself with her, during the dull summer.

She was, to him, one of the women not to be considered, while Nancy was—­the other kind!

Joan regarded, as she never had before, the freedom and safety of such girls as Nancy.  She could realize the pressure, the favouring environment that surrounded so desirable a thing as this coming together of Raymond and Nancy!