Joy herself, wearing a white duck sailor suit, with a red handkerchief knotted about her neck, answered my knock. She held her hand to her eyes to shade them from the rays of the afternoon sun, so that I could not, at first, quite make out her expression. The first thing she showed, after her surprise, was a most cordial satisfaction at seeing me. She did not, apparently, expect me, but my presence delighted her. I saw next that she was in trouble. The very intensity of her welcome alarmed me. The two vertical lines between her brows were deeply cut into her forehead, her lips were quivering, there were dark circles under her eyes.
She drew me quickly into the library, and I saw terror in her look. Her cheeks were pale and wan. Her hand trembled, as it lay on the back of a chair where she leaned.
"Oh, I am so glad you have come!" had been her first speech, murmured in the hall, and it was repeated now as I stood before her. "I am so glad you have come! I need you so!"
I had fancied before that her face was one capable of expressing tragedy—not every woman's is. Tragedy shadowed her face now, giving her a newer, more dramatic beauty so moving that, despite my alarm, I could not help wondering at it.
"You are not well," I exclaimed.
"Oh, well enough—" she replied.
"Something is the matter—what is it?"
"Sit down and I'll try to tell you." She dropped into a chair, with her elbow on the table, letting her cheek fall into the hollow of her palm. Her eyes closed for a moment; the soft, long lashes shading her pale cheek. Then she shook herself and sat erect. "I'm so sleepy!" she moaned. "I haven't slept since night before last."
I sprang up from the window-seat. "Won't you lie down here and rest? Do!" I pleaded.
"Oh, I don't dare! I don't dare!" she cried.