BOOK IV (continued 3)

Mrs. Ogden got up. "I think we've talked long enough," she said. "In any case, I have; I feel very tired." And going slowly to the door she left the room.

3

Joan sat and stared at the floor. It had been quite fruitless, as it had been in the past; she and her mother could never meet on the ground of mutual understanding and tolerance. Then why did they love each other? Why that added fetter?

The discussion that evening had held some new features. Her mother's calmness, for one thing; she had been nonplussed by it, not expecting it. Her mother had told her to take her money and go whenever she pleased; yes, but go how? What her mother gave with one hand she took away with the other. If she left her now it would be with the haunting knowledge of having left a woman who either would not or could not adapt herself to the changed circumstances; who would harbour a grievance to the end of her days. Her mother's very devotion was a weapon turned ruthlessly against her daughter, capable of robbing her of all peace of mind. This would be a bad beginning for strenuous work; and yet her mother had undoubtedly some right on her side. She had lost her husband, and she had lost Milly, and even supposing that neither of them had represented to her what Joan did, still death, when it came, was always terrible. And the talk, the gossip there would be! Everyone in Seabourne would pity her for having such an unnatural daughter; they would lift their eyebrows and purse their lips. "Very strange, a most peculiar young woman." Oh, yes, all Seabourne would be scandalized if she left home, especially at such a time. She would be thought utterly callous and odd; a kind of heartless freak.

Then there had been the subterfuge about her staying occasionally with Elizabeth. She had said, in a voice that she had tried to make casual: "Elizabeth has a flat of her own in London, and she could always put me up when I was there." That had been a lie, pure and simple, because she was a coward when it came to hurting people. She had tried to cloak her real purpose, and her mother had seen through her with humiliating ease. It was true enough that Mrs. Ogden would have to economize, and would find herself in a better position to cope with the changed circumstances if she took a flat just big enough for herself; but was that her only motive for not wanting her mother to have a spare bedroom? She knew that it was not. She despised herself for having descended to lies. Was she becoming a liar? The answer was not far to seek; she had lied not only to save her mother pain, but because she had not had the courage to say straight out that she intended leaving her mother's home for that of another woman. She had realized that in doing such a thing she was embarking upon the unusual; this she had felt the moment she came to putting her intention into words, and she had funked the confession.

She stopped to consider this aspect carefully. It was unusual, and because it was unusual she had been embarrassed; a hitherto unsuspected respect for convention had assailed her. She had never heard of any girl of her acquaintance taking such a step, now that she came to think of it. It was quite a common thing for men to share rooms with a friend, and, of course, girls left home when they married. When they married. Ah! that was the point, that was what made all the difference, as her mother had pointed out. If she had been able to say: "I'm going to marry Richard in August," even although the separation would still have been there, she doubted whether, in the end, her mother would really have offered any strenuous opposition. Pain she would have felt; she remembered the scene with her mother that day long ago, when Richard had proposed to her, but it would have been quite a different sort of pain; there would have been less bitterness in the thought, because marriage had the weight of centuries of custom behind it.

Centuries of custom, centuries of precedent! They pressed, they crushed, they suffocated. If you gave in to them you might venture to hope to live somehow, but if you opposed them you broke yourself to pieces against their iron flanks. She saw it all; it was not her fault, it was not her mother's fault. They were just two poor straws being asked to swim against the current of that monster tyrant: "the usual thing!"

She got up and walked feverishly about the room. They must swim against the current; it was ridiculous, preposterous that because she did not marry she should be forced to live a crippled existence. What real difference could it possibly make to her mother's loneliness if her daughter shared a flat with Elizabeth instead of with a husband? No difference at all, except in precedent. Then it was only by submitting to precedent that you could be free? What she was proposing seemed cruel now, even to herself; and why? Because it was not softened and toned down by precedent, not wreathed in romance as the world understood romance. "Good God!" she thought bitterly, "can there be no development of individuality in this world without hurting oneself or someone else?" She clenched her fists. "I don't care, I don't care! I've a right to my life, and I shall go in August. I defy precedent. I'm Joan Ogden, a law unto myself, and I mean to prove it."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE 1

ELIZABETH'S attitude towards the new decision to leave Seabourne made Joan uneasy. Elizabeth said nothing at all, merely nodding her head. Joan thought that she was worried and unhappy about something, but tried in vain to find out the reason.

They worked on steadily together; but she began to miss the old enthusiasm that had made of Elizabeth the perfect teacher. Now she was dull and dispirited, even a little abstracted at times. It was clear that her mind was not in their work. Was it because she doubted their going to London in August? If Elizabeth began to weaken seriously, Joan felt that all must indeed be lost. She needed support and encouragement, as never before, now that she had taken the plunge and told her mother definitely for the last time that she meant to break away. She felt that with Elizabeth's whole-hearted support she could manage somehow to stand out against the odds, but if she was not to be believed in, if Elizabeth lost faith in her, then she doubted her own strength to carry things through.

"Elizabeth," she said, with a note of fear in her voice, "you feel quite certain that we shall go?"

Elizabeth looked up from the book she was reading. "I don't know, Joan."

"But I've told Mother definitely that I intend to go in August."

"Yes, I know you have."

"But you're doubtful? You think I shall go back on you again?"

"You won't mean to do that, but so many things happen, don't they? I think I'm getting superstitious."

"Nothing is going to happen this time," said Joan, in a voice which she tried vainly to make firm. "I'm not the weak sort of thing that you seem to think me, and in August I go to London!"

Elizabeth took her hand and held it. "I could weep over you!" she said.

2

The days were slipping by. It was now June and Mrs. Ogden still persisted in her refusal to leave Seabourne. On this point Joan found herself up against an opposition stronger than any she had had to meet before. Gently but firmly, her mother stuck to her decision.

"You go, my dear," she said constantly now. "You go, and God bless you and take care of you, my Joan." She seemed to be all gentleness and resignation. "After all, I'm not as young as I was, and I'm dull and tiresome, I know."

She had grown thinner in the past few weeks, and her stoop was more pronounced. Joan knew that she must be sleeping badly, for she could hear her moving about her room well into the small hours. Her appetite, always poor, appeared to fail completely.

"Oh! Mother, do try to eat something. Are you ill?"

"No, no, my dear, of course not, but I don't feel very hungry."

"Mother, I must know; is your head worrying you again?"

"I didn't say it was; what makes you ask?"

"Because you sit pressing it with your hand so often. Does it ache?"

"A little, but it's nothing at all; don't worry, darling; go on with your studying."

Joan often discovered her now crying quietly by herself, but as she came in her mother would make as though to whisk the tears away.

"Mother, you're crying!"

"No, I'm not, dearest; my eyes are a little weak, that's all."

Towards Elizabeth she appeared to have changed even more completely. Now she was always urging her to come to meals. "You'll want to talk things over with Joan," she would say. "Please stop to lunch to-day, Elizabeth; you two must have a thousand plans to discuss."

She spoke quite openly to Elizabeth about Joan's chances of taking a scholarship at Cambridge, and what their life together would be in London. She sighed very often, it is true, and sometimes her eyes would fill with tears, but when this happened she would smile bravely. "Don't take any notice of me, Elizabeth; I'm just a foolish old woman."

Joan's heart ached with misery. This new, submissive, gentle mother was like the pathetic figure of her childhood; a creature difficult to resist, and still more difficult to coerce. Something so utterly helpless that it called up all the chivalry and protectiveness of which her nature was capable.

She found a little parcel on her dressing-table one evening containing six knitted ties and a note, which said: "For my Joan to wear at Cambridge. I knitted them when I couldn't sleep." Joan laid down her head and cried bitterly.

In so many little ways her mother was showing thought for her. She found her going through her clothes one day. "Mother, what on earth are you doing?"

"Just looking over your things, dearest. I see you'll need new stockings and a new hat or two. Oh! and, Joan, do you really think these vests are warm enough? I believe Cambridge is very damp."

She began to seek out Elizabeth, and whereas, before, she had contented herself more or less with generalities regarding Cambridge and Joan's life with her friend, she now appeared to want a detailed description of everything.

"Elizabeth," she said one day, "come and sit here by me. I want you to tell me all about your flat. Describe it to me, tell me what it looks like, and then I can picture you two to myself after Joan's gone. Is it sunny? Where is the flat? Isn't it somewhere near the Edgware Road?"

"In Bloomsbury," said Elizabeth rather shortly; then she saw that Joan was listening, and added hastily: "Let me see, is it sunny? Yes, I think it is, rather; it's a very tiny affair, you know."

"Oh, but big enough for you two, I expect; I wonder if I shall ever see it."

"Of course you will, Mother," said Joan eagerly. "Why we expect you to come up and stay with us; don't we, Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth assented, but Mrs. Ogden shook her head. "No, not that, my dear, you won't want to be bothered with me; but it's a darling thought of yours all the same. And now, Elizabeth, tell me all about Cambridge. When I'm alone here in the evenings I shall want to be able to make pictures of the place where my Joan is working."

Elizabeth felt uncomfortable and suspicious; was Mrs. Ogden making a fool of her, of them both? She tried to describe the town and then the colleges, with the Backs running down to the river, but even to herself her voice sounded hard and unsympathetic.

"Oh, dear, I'm afraid I've bored you," said Mrs. Ogden apologetically.

And Elizabeth, looking across at Joan, saw an angry light in her eyes.

3

Mrs. Ogden gave the maid-servant notice, without consulting her daughter, who knew nothing about it until the girl came to her to protest. "The mistress has given me a month's notice, and I'm sure I do no what I've done. It's a hard place and she's awful to please, but I've done my best. I have indeed!"

Joan went in search of her mother. "Why on earth have you given Ellen notice?" she demanded. "She's the best girl we've ever had."

"I know she is," said Mrs. Ogden, who was studying her bank book.

"Then why——?"

"Well, you see, darling, I shan't be able to afford a servant when you've gone, so I thought it better to give her notice at once. Of course I couldn't very well tell her why I was sending her away, could I?"

Joan collapsed into a chair. "But, good heavens, Mother! You can't do the housework. Surely with a little management you might have kept her on; she only gets nineteen pounds a year!"

"Ah! but there's her food and washing," said Mrs. Ogden patiently.

"But what do you propose to do? You can't sweep floors and that sort of thing; this is awful!"

"Now don't begin to worry, Joan. I shall be perfectly all right; I can have a charwoman twice a week."

"But what about the cooking, Mother?"

"Oh, that will be easy, darling; you know how little I eat."

Joan began walking about the room, a trick she had acquired lately when worried. "It's impossible!" she protested. "You'll end by making yourself very ill."

Mrs. Ogden got up and kissed her. "Do you think," she said softly, "that I can't make sacrifices for my girl, when she demands them of me?"

"Oh, Mother, I do beg of you to come to London! I know I could make you comfortable there."

Mrs. Ogden drew herself away. "No, I can't do that," she said. "I've lived here since you and Milly were little children, my husband died here and so did your sister; you mustn't ask me to leave my memories, Joan."

In July the servant left. "No, darling, don't do the housework for me; I must learn to do things for myself," said her mother, as Joan was going into the kitchen as a matter of course.

A period of chaos ensued. Mrs. Ogden struggled with brooms and slop-pails as a mosquito might struggle with Cleopatra's Needle. The food she prepared came out of tins, for the most part, and what was fresh was spoilt before it reached the table. Their meals were tragedies, and when on one occasion Joan's endurance gave out over a particularly nasty stew, Mrs. Ogden burst into tears.

"Oh! and I did try so hard!" she sobbed.

Joan put her arms round her. "You poor darling," she comforted, "don't cry; it's not so bad, really; only I don't see how I'm ever to leave you."

Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes. "But you must leave me," she said steadily. "I want you to go, since you've set your heart on it."

"Well, I do believe you'll starve!" said Joan, between laughter and tears.

Every evening Mrs. Ogden was worn out. She could not read, she could not sew; whenever she tried her eyelids drooped and she had to give it up. In the end she was forced to sit quietly with closed eyes. Joan, watching her apprehensively from the other side of the lamp, would feel her heart tighten.

"Mother, go to bed; you're tired to death."

"Oh, no, darling, I'll sit up with you; I shall have plenty of evenings to go to bed early when you've gone."

Not content, apparently, with moderate hours of work, Mrs. Ogden bought an alarm clock. The first that Joan knew of this instrument of torture was when it woke her with a fearful start at six-thirty one morning. She could not exactly locate whence the sound came, but rushed instinctively into her mother's room.

"What is it? Are you ill? What was that bell?" she panted.

Mrs. Ogden, already out of bed, pointed triumphantly to the alarm. "I had to get it to wake me up," she explained.

"But, my dear mother, it's only half-past six; you can't get up at this hour!"

"There's the kitchen fire to light, darling, and I want you to have a really hot bath by half-past seven."

Joan groaned. "Go back to bed at once," she ordered, giving her a gentle push. "I'll light the kitchen fire; this is ridiculous!"

4

It was the middle of July; only a few weeks more and then freedom. "Freedom, freedom, freedom!" repeated Joan to herself in a kind of desperation. "I'm going to be free at last." But something in her shrank and weakened. "No, no," she thought in terror. "I will leave her; I must."

She sought Elizabeth out for comfort. "Only a few weeks now, Elizabeth."

"Yes, only a few weeks now," repeated Elizabeth flatly. They went on with their plans with quiet stubbornness. They spent a day in London buying their furniture on the hire system; the selection was not very varied, but they could not afford to go elsewhere. They chose fumed oak for the most part, and blue-grey curtains with art carpets to match them. Their greatest extravagance was a large roomy bookcase.

Joan said: "Think of it; this is for our books, yours and mine."

Elizabeth smiled and pressed her hand. "Are you happy, my dear?" she asked doubtfully.

Joan flared up. "What a ridiculous question to ask; but perhaps you're not happy?"

"Oh, don't!" said Elizabeth, turning away.

They had tea in the restaurant of the "Furniture Emporium," tepid Indian tea and stale pound cake.

"Ugh!" said Joan disgustedly, as she tried to drink the mixture.

"Yes, it's undrinkable," Elizabeth agreed.

They paid for the meal which they had left untouched, and catching a bus, went to the station.

On their way home in the train they sat silent. They were very tired, but it was not that which made speech difficult, but rather the sense of deep disappointment oppressing them both. No, it had not been at all like they had expected, this choosing of the furniture for their home together; something intangible had spoilt it all. "It was my fault," Joan thought miserably. "It was all my fault. I meant to be happy, I wanted to be, but I wasn't a bit—and Elizabeth saw it."

When they said "Good night" at the Rodneys' house they clung to each other for a moment in silence.

"Go. Oh, do go!" said Elizabeth brokenly, and Joan went with drooping head.

CHAPTER FORTY 1

IT had come. Joan lay awake and realized that this was her last night in Seabourne. She got up and lit the gas. Her eyes roved round the familiar bedroom; there was Milly's bed—they had not had it moved after her death, and there was the old white wardrobe and the dressing-table, and the crazy arm-chair off which she and Milly had torn the caster when they were children. The caster had never been replaced. "How like Seabourne," she thought, smiling ruefully. "Casters never get themselves replaced here; nothing does."

She looked at her new trunk, already locked and strapped; it had been a present from her mother, and her name, "Joan Ogden," was painted across its top in white block letters. "I thought it safer to put the full name," her mother had said.

The blind flapped and the gas flame blew sideways; it was windy, and the thud of the sea on shingles came in and seemed to fill the room. "I am happy!" she told herself; "I'm very happy."

How brave her mother had been that evening; she had smiled and talked just as though nothing unusual were about to happen, but oh! how miserably tired she had looked, and ill. Was she going to be ill? Joan's heart seemed to stop beating; suppose her mother should get ill all alone in the house! She had never thought of that before, but of course she would be alone every night, now that she had sent away the servant. What was to be done? It was dangerous, terribly dangerous for a woman of that age to sleep alone in the house. She pulled herself up sharply; oh, well, she would speak to her in the morning and tell her that she must have a maid. Of course it was all nonsense; she must afford one. But what about to-morrow night? She couldn't get a servant by that time. Never mind; nothing was likely to happen in one or two nights. No, but it might be weeks before she found a maid; what was to be done?

If her mother got ill, would she telegraph for her? Yes, of course; and yet how could she if she were alone in the house? "Oh, stop, stop!" cried Joan aloud to herself. "Stop all this, I tell you!" She had an overwhelming desire to rush into her mother's room on the instant, and wake her up, just to see that she was alive, but she controlled herself. "Perhaps she's crying," she thought, and started towards the door. "No," she said resolutely, "I will not go in and see her!"

She began to think of Elizabeth too; of her face when they had said good-bye that afternoon. "Don't be late in calling for me," she had cautioned, and Elizabeth had answered: "I shan't be late, Joan." What was it that she fancied she had seen in Elizabeth's eyes and heard in her voice? Not anger, certainly, and not actually tears; but something new, something rather dreadful, a sort of entreaty. She shuddered. Oh, why could there never be any real happiness for Joan Ogden, never any real fulfilment, never any joy that was quite without blemish? She felt that her unlucky star shed its beams over everyone with whom she came in contact, everyone she loved; those beams had touched Elizabeth and scorched her. Yet how much she loved Elizabeth; she would have laid down her life to save her pain. But she loved her mother too, not quite in the same way, but deeply, very deeply. She knew this, now that she was about to leave her; she had always known it, of course, but now that their parting was near at hand the fact seemed to blaze forth with renewed force. She began thinking about love in the abstract. Love was jealous of being divided; it did not admit of your really loving more than one creature at a time. She remembered vaguely having thought this before, years ago. Yet in her case this could not be true, for she loved them both, terribly, desperately, and yet could not serve them both. No, she could not serve them both, but she had chosen.

She lay down on her bed again and buried her face in the pillow. "Oh, Elizabeth," she whispered, "I will come, I will be faithful, I swear I will."

2

They breakfasted at Leaside at eight o'clock, for Joan's train left at ten-thirty. At ten o'clock Elizabeth would arrive with the fly. Joan could not swallow.

"Eat something, my darling," said Mrs. Ogden tenderly. She looked as though she had been crying all night, her eyes were red and swollen, but she smiled bravely whenever she saw her daughter's glance turned in her direction.

She refused to give in about not sleeping alone. "Nonsense," she said brusquely, when Joan implored, "I shall be all right; don't be silly, darling."

But she did not look as though she would be all right, and Joan searched her brain desperately for some new scheme, but found none. What was she to do? And in less than two hours now she would be gone. Throwing her arms round her mother's neck she dropped her head on her shoulder.

"I can't leave you like this," she said desperately.

Mrs. Ogden's tears began to fall. "But you must leave me, Joan; I want you to go."

They clung together, forlorn and miserable.

"You will write, Mother, very often?"

"Very often, my Joan, and you must too."

"Every day," Joan promised. "Every day."

She went up to her room and began to pack her bag, but, contrary to custom, Mrs. Ogden did not follow her. At a quarter to ten she came downstairs; her mother was nowhere to be seen.

"Mother!" she called anxiously, "where are you?"

"In my room, darling," came the answer from behind a closed door. "I'll be down in a minute; you wait where you are."

Joan wandered about the drawing-room. It had changed very little in all these years; the wallpaper was the same, though faded now, there were the same pink curtains and chairs, all shabby and reflecting the fallen family fortunes. The turquoise blue tiles in the grate alone remained startlingly bright and aggressive. The engraving of Admiral Sir William Routledge looked down on her as if with interest; she wondered if he were pleased or angry at the step his descendant was about to take; perhaps, as he had been a man of action, he was pleased. "'Nelson's Darling' ought at least to admire my courage!" she thought ruefully, and turned her back on him. She sat down in the Nelson arm-chair.

Nelson's chair, how her mother had treasured it, how she did still; her poor little mother. Joan patted the extended arms with tender hands, and rested her head wearily where Nelson's head was said to have rested. "Good-bye," she murmured, with a lump in her throat.

3

She began to feel anxious about her mother. It was five minutes to ten; what on earth was she doing? In another five minutes Elizabeth would come with the fly. Her mother had told her to wait in the drawing-room, but she could not wait much longer, she must go and find her. At that moment the door opened quietly and Mrs. Ogden came in. She was all in grey; a soft, pearly grey, the colour of doves' feathers. Her hair was carefully piled, high on her head, and blended in softness and shine with the grey of her dress; she must have bathed her eyes, for they looked bright again and almost young. She came forward, stretching out her arms.

Joan sprang up. "Mother! It's—why it's the old dress, the same dress you wore years ago on our last Anniversary Day. Oh! I remember it so well; that's the dress that made you look like a grey dove, I remember thinking that." The outstretched arms folded round her. "What made you put it on to-day?" she faltered, "it makes you look so pretty!"

Mrs. Ogden stroked her cheek. "I wanted you to remember me like this," she whispered. "And, Joan, this is Anniversary Day."

Joan started. "So it is," she stammered, "and I had forgotten."

The door-bell clanged loudly. "Let the charwoman answer it." said Mrs. Ogden, "she's here this morning."

They heard the front door open and close.

"Joan!" came Elizabeth's voice from the hall. "Joan!"

No one answered, and in a moment or two Elizabeth had come into the room. Joan and her mother were standing hand in hand, like two children.

Elizabeth said sharply: "Joan, we shall miss the train, are you ready?"

Joan let go of Mrs. Ogden's hand and stepped forward; she was deadly pale and her eyes shone feverishly. When she spoke her voice sounded dry, like autumn leaves crushed under foot.

"I'm not coming, Elizabeth; I can't leave her."

Elizabeth made a little inarticulate sound in her throat: "Joan!"

"I'm not coming, Elizabeth, I can't leave her."

"Joan, for the last time I ask you: Will you come with me?"

"No!" said Joan breathlessly. "No, I can't."

Elizabeth turned without another word and left the room and the house. Joan heard the door clang dully after her, and the sound of wheels that grew fainter and fainter as the fly lumbered away.

4

The queer days succeeded each other like phantoms. Looking back on the week which elapsed between Elizabeth's going and her last letter, Joan found that she could remember very little of that time, or of the days that followed. She moved about, ate her food, got up and went to bed in a kind of stupor, broken by moments of dreadful lucidity.

On the sixth day came the letter in the familiar handwriting. The paper bore no address, only the date, "August, 1901;" a London postmark was on the envelope.

Elizabeth wrote:

JOAN,

I knew that you would never come to me, I think I have known it in my heart for a long time. But I must have been a proud and stubborn woman, for I would not admit my failure until the very last. I had a hundred things to keep hope alive in me; your splendid brain, your longing to free yourself from Seabourne and what it stands for, the strength of all the youth in you, and then the love I thought you had for me. Yes, I counted a great deal on that, perhaps because I judged it by my love for you. I was wrong, you see, your love did not hold, it was not strong enough to give you your liberty; or was it that you were too strong to take it? I don't know.

Joan, I shall never come back, I cannot come back. I must go away from you, tear you out of me, forget you. You have had too much of me already. Oh! far too much! But now I have taken it back, all, all; for I will not go into my new life incomplete.

I wonder if you have ever realized what my life at Seabourne has been? So unendurable at times that but for you I think I should have ended it. The long, long days with their dreadful monotony, three hundred and sixty-five of them in every year; and then the long, long years!

I used to go home from Leaside in the evening, and sit in the study with Ralph and Uncle John's portrait, and feel as if tight fingers were squeezing my throat; as if I were being suffocated under the awful plush folds of the curtains. I used to have the horrible idea that Seabourne had somehow become a living, embodied entity, of which Ralph and Old Uncle John and the plush curtains and the smell of mildew that always hung about Ralph's books, all formed a terrifying part. Then I used to look at myself in the glass when I got up every morning, and count the lines on my face one by one, and realize that my youth was slipping past me; with every one of those three hundred and sixty-five days a little less of it remained, a little more went into the toothless jaws of Seabourne.

Joan, I too have had my ambition, I too once meant to make good. When I first came to take care of Ralph's house, I never intended to stay for more than a year at most. I meant to go to London and be a journalist if they'd have me; in any case I meant to work, out in the real world, the world that has passed Seabourne by, long ago.

Then I saw you, an overgrown colt of a child, all legs and arms. I began to teach you, and gradually, very gradually, you became Seabourne's ally. You never knew it, but at moments I did; you were helping the place to hold me. My interest in you, in your personality, your unusual ability; the joy it was to teach you, and later the deep love I felt for you, all chained me to Leaside. My very desire to uproot you and drag you away was only another snare that held me to the life I detested. Do you remember how I tried to break free, that time, and failed? It was you who pulled me back, through my love for you. Yes, even my love for you was used by Seabourne to secure its victim.

I grew older year by year, and saw my chances slipping from me; and I often felt older than I was, life at Seabourne made me feel old. I realized that I was only half a being, that there were experiences I had never had, fulfilments I had never known, joys and sorrows which many a poor devil of a charwoman could have taught me about. I felt stunted and coerced, checked at the very roots of me, hungry for my birthright.

But as time went on I managed to dam up the torrent, till it flowed away from its natural course; it flowed out to you, Joan. Then it was that my desire to help forward a brilliant pupil, grew, little by little, into an absorbing passion. I became a monoïdeist, with you as the idea. I lived for you, for your work, your success; I lived in you, in your present, in your future, which I told myself would be my future too. Oh! my dear, how I built on you; and I thought I had dug the foundations so deep that no waves or tempests could destroy them.

Then, five days ago, the house fell down; it crashed about my ears, it stunned me. All I knew then was that I must escape from the ruin or let myself be crushed to death; all I know now is that I must never see that ruin again.

Joan, I will not even go near enough to our disaster to ask you what you are going to do. Why should I ask? I already know the answer. You must forget me, as I must forget you. I don't understand the way of things, they seem to me to be cruelly badly managed at the source; but perhaps Someone or Something is wise, after all, as they would have us believe. No, I don't mean that, I can't feel like that—resigned; not yet.

By the time this letter reaches you I shall be married to Lawrence Benson. Do I love him? No, not at all; I like him and I suppose I respect him, but he is the last person on earth that I could love. I have told him all this and he still wants to marry me. We shall leave very soon for South Africa, where his bank is opening new branches. Oh! Joan, and you will be in Seabourne; the injustice of it! You see I am hovering still in the vicinity of my ruin, but I shall get clear, never doubt it.

Do not try to see me before I go, I have purposely given no address, and Ralph has been asked not to give it either 3 and do not write to me. I want to forget.

ELIZABETH.