"You may not need material help," the woman put in hastily; "but, spiritually, who is not in need of help from God."
Joan could think of no suitable reply for this and they sat in silence, the woman studying her face intently. Then presently, flushing with the earnestness of her purpose, she put out a cold hand and took Joan's.
"I think they have left it to me to tell you," she said. "The little life that was within you has been killed by your accident."
The colour flamed to Joan's face. A sense of awe and a feeling of intense relief surged up in her. "Oh, what a good thing!" she gasped, almost before she realized what she said.
Mrs. Westwood sat back in her chair, her eyes no longer looked at Joan. "The child which God had given you even in your sin," she said stiffly.
Joan leaned forward quickly. "I did not mean just that," she said, "and yet I did. You do not know, you can't guess, how afraid I was getting. Everyone's hand against me, and even the people who had most loved me seeming to hate me because of this."
Her voice trailed into silence before the stern disapproval of the other woman's face. Yet once having started, she was driven on to speak all the jumble of thoughts that had lain in her mind these last two months.
"I was not ashamed or afraid, to begin with," she hurried the words out. "It had not seemed to me wrong. I lived with him because I thought I loved him and we did not want to get married. Then one day he let me see—oh, no, I am not being quite truthful, for I had seen it before—that he was in reality ashamed of our life together. He was acting against his convictions because it amused him. I could not bear that, it seemed to drag our life together through the mud, and I left him."
She could see that Mrs. Westwood was not making the slightest attempt to understand her; still she went wildly on:
"I went home and it seemed all right. My life with him faded away; I suppose I had never really loved him. Then, then they found out about what was going to happen and they turned against me, even Aunt Janet;" her voice broke on the words, she buried her face in her arms, crying like a child. "Aunt Janet, Aunt Janet," she whispered again and again through her tears.