Joan had done her thrilled best to understand, since it was expected of her, but she felt rather puzzled. Was it that he feared his emotions at parting might get beyond his control? Joan sighed. She could have borne that. Or was it—here she frowned importantly—that his habits were already resuming control of him, now that her hand was, so to speak, off the rudder?
Eduard Desmond, as all the Convent knew, was a man of the world, with a past. He was also in his lighter moments an artist. The Convent was rather vague in its mind as to the form of art he pursued; but that it included habits was unfortunately certain, and his young niece Betty had vouched personally for the authenticity of his past. It had had to do with a married woman. The Convent frequently prayed for him; though unknown to the nuns.
Occasionally this distinguished-looking, fascinating, rather melancholy young man came to take Betty and a few chosen friends to a matinée, out of the kindness of his heart. Perhaps it was not pure kindness of heart that had called to his special attention young Joan Darcy, with her square chin, and straight black brows beneath which the eyes looked out at you with an odd intensity; unless she smiled, when they danced like blue water in the sun. She was not pretty, Joan, and boys rarely noticed her, somewhat to her chagrin; but Eduard Desmond was no boy, and his past perhaps had made him perceptive. The acquaintance between them ripened to a degree unsuspected by the good sisters at the Convent, if not by his family, who aided and abetted it, feeling that a young girl might be rather good for Eduard. Doubtless she was. She entered into the duty of "reforming" him with a conscientious thoroughness that might have been trying to an artistic temperament, had he not got a good deal of genuine interest out of the process himself; interest, and even more. She had soft little confiding ways, like a friendly child's, combined with the queerest flashes of cool understanding, anything but childlike, which kept him rather in awe of her innocent vision. Indeed, that the affair went no further than it did was due perhaps to Joan's perfectly unconscious habit of withdrawing herself to see what was going on, of being "not there when wanted," as Eduard put it to himself, annoyed. He thought it deliberate, the reserve of the prude, or of the embryo coquette; whereas it was really one of the crosses of Joan's life, dreaded by her as the self-conscious dread attacks of shyness.
So far she had come out of what might have been an illuminating experience bearing only two small trophies of the sort girls love to whisper about together in bed after dances when the lights are out; one rather lingering kiss upon her slim, brown paw (which did not startle her at all, but made her want to giggle); and now this love-letter—if it was a love-letter.
Again Joan sighed. She regretted with all her heart that queer aloofness which came upon her in critical moments, making her notice that a man's ears were put on wrong, or that her own finger-nails needed shining, when she should have been surrendering her whole soul to emotion. Was it always going to keep her from plumbing the depths of life?
"Oh, but it shan't!" she insisted to herself. "I will not be an innocent bystander! Things must happen to me; they must. All kinds of things!"
It was the sort of challenge to which Fate is apt to give attentive ear.
Presently, out of facts and recollections she slipped, as was her wont, into a game of Pretend, which had been a sort of accompaniment to Joan from her cradle; growing as she grew, changing as life changed its aspect to her eyes. She was no longer plain little Joan Darcy, returning from school in a shabby suit which she had outgrown, to a shabby home which she had also somewhat outgrown. She was a glorified young person of the singer or actress variety, returning from a career of conquest in foreign parts, with her maid Fifine traveling second class in the coach behind, as they do in all the better novels. Her father, not much altered from real life except that there were no spots on his clothes (the Major's manner being grand enough for any circumstances), would be at the station with the victoria and pair—or perhaps the limousine—and would murmur to the second footman, "Home, James"; and at the door of the family mansion, a pillared, fan-lighted door (Joan's mind lingered lovingly over architectural details even in her haste to reach the people in the doorway) would be Ellen Neal first, dropping respectful curtsies—quite a stretch, this, even for Joan's imagination!—and beyond her, in a lovely tea-gown, all silk and lace and newness, would stand her mother with outstretched arms, waiting....
Here Joan became suddenly aware that she was dropping large, hot tears upon her precious chocolates—she who had sworn never, never to cry any more in all her life, because tears are only useless things that make the nose red!
"But why am I crying?" she demanded of herself, puzzled, still mazed with her game of Pretend.