The street was empty.  They were pacing it slowly, up and down.

“I’ve always been a coward,” he continued.  “I fell in love with you the first day I met you on the stairs.  But I dared not tell you.”

“You didn’t give me that impression,” answered Joan.

She had always found it difficult to know when to take him seriously and when not.

“I was so afraid you would find it out,” he explained.

“You thought I would take advantage of it,” she suggested.

“One can never be sure of a woman,” he answered.  “And it would have been so difficult.  There was a girl down in Scotland, one of the village girls.  It wasn’t anything really.  We had just been children together.  But they all thought I had gone away to make my fortune so as to come back and marry her—­even my mother.  It would have looked so mean if after getting on I had married a fine London lady.  I could never have gone home again.”

“But you haven’t married her—­or have you?” asked Joan.

“No,” he answered.  “She wrote me a beautiful letter that I shall always keep, begging me to forgive her, and hoping I might be happy.  She had married a young farmer, and was going out to Canada.  My mother will never allow her name to be mentioned in our house.”

They had reached the end of the street again.  Joan held out her hand with a laugh.

“Thanks for the compliment,” she said.  “Though I notice you wait till you’re going away before telling me.”

“But quite seriously,” she added, “give it a little more thought—­the enlisting, I mean.  The world isn’t too rich in kind influences.  It needs men like you.  Come, pull yourself together and show a little pluck.”  She laughed.

“I’ll try,” he promised, “but it won’t be any use; I shall drift about the streets, seeking to put heart into myself, but all the while my footsteps will be bearing me nearer and nearer to the recruiting office; and outside the door some girl in the crowd will smile approval or some old fool will pat me on the shoulder and I shall sneak in and it will close behind me.  It must be fine to have courage.”

He wrote her two days later from Ayr, giving her the name of his regiment, and again some six months later from Flanders.  But there would have been no sense in her replying to that last.

She lingered in the street by herself, a little time, after he had turned the corner.  It had been a house of sorrow and disappointment to her; but so also she had dreamed her dreams there, seen her visions.  She had never made much headway with her landlord and her landlady:  a worthy couple, who had proved most excellent servants, but who prided themselves, to use their own expression, on knowing their place and keeping themselves to themselves.  Joan had given them notice that morning, and had been surprised at the woman’s bursting into tears.

“I felt it just the same when young Mr. McKean left us,” she explained with apologies.  “He had been with us five years.  He was like you, miss, so unpracticable.  I’d got used to looking after him.”