CHAPTER XIII
"Joyous we launch out on trackless seas carolling free, singing our songs."
A week from that night Joan again eluded Sylvia. She did it by not going to the studio for dinner. She felt deceitful and mean, but there were heights—or were they depths?—that Sylvia could not reach, and intuitively Joan felt that Sylvia would disapprove of what she was now doing.
Patricia was not in when Joan reached her rooms—they were small, dim rooms and rather cluttered.
Sitting alone, waiting, Joan thought of Patricia more intimately than she often did. She recalled what Sylvia had told of her; remembered the warnings, and her eyes dimmed.
"Poor old Pat!" she mused, "she's like a pretty bird—just lighting on things, or"—and here Joan thought she had struck on something rather expressive—"or like a lovely, bright cloud casting a shadow. No matter what colour the cloud is, the shadow's dark. Dear old Pat! Well—I see the colour."
This was satisfying and brought up her feeling about Patricia, which had been depressed.
And just then Patricia tripped in, humming and rippling and stumbling over a rug as she felt her way in the gloom—Joan had not turned on the lights. Presently she stopped short and asked sharply:
"Who is here?"