"No. About herself." Martin flecked the ashes from his cigar. "And now," he said with a huge sigh that seemed to sweep all regrets before it, "go and wash your face!"
Joan ran away, and when she came back the room was empty and the honk-honk of Martin's horn sounded down the river road.
Then, as often happens when one stands in an empty room, Joan was conscious of a supersensitiveness. She, quite naturally, attributed it to the ordeal she was about to undergo—the meeting with Clive Cameron and her late talk with Martin. Must she always be on the defensive? Must she always feel that her volcano had blown her up when really she had escaped by its light?
While there was a certain amount of pleasurable excitement in the meeting with Cameron, while it lacked all that her meeting with Raymond had held, still her past experiences were of so uncommon a nature that she could not contemplate them without nervous strain, and she wished that she might have had a longer reprieve before Cameron came.
"With nothing really to be ashamed of," she thought, "I feel like a criminal dodging justice. I wish something so big would come that I could lose myself in it."
Then she walked to the window overlooking The Gap.
"It's no easy matter, Joan my lamb!" almost it seemed as if it were Patricia speaking, "to tie both ends of the rainbow together." Joan smiled at her thought.
"Dear, dear old Pat!" she spoke the words aloud. "The very thought of you—braces me."
Joan was still on the backward trail. She did not often tread it, but when she did she always returned starry-eyed and brave-hearted. That was her reward: the reward that she could share with no one—except as it helped her to live.
Presently she turned to her task of restoring the motto on the fireboard. She worked vigorously, intently, and then leaned back to get a better view.