The tears smarted in Joan's eyes, yet up till now she had not cried once. Hurt pride, hurt love, struggled for expression, but words seemed so useless.
"I had better hurry up and get away," she said; "I suppose Aunt Janet hates the thought of my being near her even."
Miss Abercrombie watched her with kindly eyes. The tragedy she had suspected on the first night was worse even than she had imagined. It stared at her out of the old, fierce face upstairs, it slipped into her thoughts of what this girl's future was going to be.
"Have you made any plans?" she asked; "do you know at all where to go?"
"Does it matter very much?" Joan answered bitterly.
"My dear," Miss Abercrombie spoke gently, "I am making no attempt to criticize, and I certainly have no right to judge, but you have a very hard fight before you and you will not win through if you go into it in that spirit. I do not want to ask questions, you would probably resent them, but will you tell me one thing. Does the man know about what is going to happen?"
"No," answered Joan. "It wouldn't make any difference if he did. It is not even as if he had persuaded me to go and live with him; I want you to understand that I went of my own free will because I thought it was right."
"You will write and tell him," suggested Miss Abercrombie. "That is only fair to him and yourself."
"No," Joan said again, "it was the one thing he was most afraid of; I would not stoop to ask him to share it with me."
Miss Abercrombie put out a quick hand. "You are forgetting that now there is someone else who is dependent on how you fight and whether you win through. You may say, 'I stand alone in this,' yet there is someone else who will have to share in paying the cost."