"You are jealous, just as you would be if Dick were suddenly to show that he liked Nancy better than you."
"We used to have such fun together, all three of us. It never entered the heads of either of us to think which he liked the best. He liked us both just the same. Why couldn't it go on like that? I've done nothing. It was after I came back from that horrid Brummels. He didn't like my going there—not that it had anything to do with him. He was just like father about it, and tried to make out that it had altered me. It hadn't altered me at all. I was just the same as I had always been. It was he that had altered."
"Can't you see, little girl, that it couldn't always go on as it used to?"
"Why not?"
"How can a man fall in love with two girls at once? He must choose one of them, or neither."
"I didn't want him to fall in love with me," said Joan quickly. "I am not in love with him. That's why it's so difficult to say anything. If I'm unhappy, it looks as if I must be."
"Not to me, dearest Joan. But you can be jealous about people without being in love with them. You know, darling, I think John Spence was almost bound to fall in love with one of you almost directly you grew up. I should have been very much surprised if he hadn't. But I could never tell which it would be. It was just as it happened to turn out. He came here when you were away, and that just turned the scale. After that it couldn't possibly be as it had been before, when you were both children; not even if you had behaved well about it."
"What!" exclaimed Joan, sitting up sharply.
Virginia smiled, and drew her back to her. "You haven't been kind to Nancy, you know," she said.
Joan did not resist her, but said rather stiffly, "It's she who hasn't been kind to me."