Joanna's roamings had taken her as far as the door leading on to the gallery. She waited, leaning against it. The back of Margaret's chair was toward her, so that she was safe from observation. For this she was not sorry, as the pain in her hand was acute, particularly upon the spot where Adrian's lips had once touched it. There it throbbed and smarted, as though a live coal were pressing into the flesh. Her face was drawn with suffering. She dreaded to have her sister ask what ailed her. But that young lady's thoughts were quite otherwise engaged. She spoke presently, over her shoulder. Her voice sounded curiously cozy.
"This evening, when he said good-by to me, Challoner lifted me right off my feet when he was kissing me. He had never done so before. I liked it. It showed how strong he is. I felt a wee bit nervous, but I enjoyed it too. I revel in his strength. My ribs ache still.—There, Nannie, is that little sample of love-making illuminating enough?"
And, leaning against the polished surface of the door, Joanna shivered, nursing and fondling her burning hand.
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH JOANNA EMBRACES A PHANTOM BLISS
The obscure psychological relation existing between twins necessarily produces either peculiar sympathy or peculiar opposition of tastes and sentiment. The record of these twin sisters was of the discordant sort. Unspoken rivalry and jealousy had divided them. Unconsciously, yet unremittingly, they had struggled for pre-eminence. At the present moment, in Joanna's case these feelings combined to produce a sensation approaching active hatred. As she leaned shivering against her bedroom door, in the oppressive warmth of the summer night, all her petty griefs and grudges against her more attractive and popular sister complained in chorus. As a child Margaret had been pretty and taking. At school, though lazy and by no means clever, she had been petted and admired. Such affection as Montagu Smyrthwaite was capable of displaying he had displayed toward her. "Margaret was sensitive, Margaret was delicate"—which meant that Margaret knew just when to cry loud enough to excite pity; just when to announce tiredness or a headache, so as to escape unwelcome exertion. She had, in short, reduced the practice of selfishness—so Joanna thought—to a fine art.
And now, finally, to-night, not timidly with disarming apology, but with flaunting assurance, Margaret dared to infringe her—Joanna's—copyright in the wonder-story of a man's love, thereby capping the climax of offense. Her transcript of the said story might be of the grosser sort; yet on that very account it showed the more convincing. No misgivings, no agonized suspense, no tremulously anxious reading between the lines, were demanded. It was printed in large type, and in language coarsely vigorous as Joseph Challoner himself! Morally it repelled Joanna, although inflaming her imagination with vague drivings of desire. Her whole poor being, indeed, was swept by conflicting and but half-comprehended passions, from amid the tempest of which this one thing declared itself in a rising scale of furious insistence—namely, that Margaret should not once again best her; that no marriage Margaret might elect to make should endanger her own marriage with Adrian Savage; that by some means, any means fair or foul, Margaret must be prevented tasting the fullness of man's love—never mind how poor an edition of love this might be, how unpoetic, bow vulgar—as long as she, Joanna, was denied love's fullness. Yet so deeply were tradition and system ingrained in her that, even at this pass, she paid homage to their ruling, since instead of making a direct attack, and owning anger as the cause of it, she tricked herself with a fiction of moral obligation.
"Margaret," she began presently from her station at the door, speaking with such self-command as she could muster, "I dislike alluding to the subject very much. No doubt you will be annoyed and will accuse me of interference; still there is something I feel I ought to say to you. If I do not say it now, there may not be a suitable opportunity later."
"Then pray say it now. As I have told you, I want to get the whole thing thoroughly thrashed out to-night, so that we may avoid odious discussions in the future. What is it, Joanna?"
"I can't help observing that it is only since papa's death Mr. Challoner has paid you so much attention. Before then—"