For two or three days she attempted to ignore the man's presence in class next her, and Simpson himself in no way intruded. He had taken her snubbing like a man; from the height of his dreams he had fallen into an apathetic despair; the only effect it had on him was to make him stupider than ever at his work. Then one evening, with a face working rather painfully, he told her that he did not intend to come any more.
"I am going to another centre," he said, gathering his books together and not looking at her.
"Has Mr. Phillips been too much for you?" she asked, wilfully ignoring the deeper meaning behind his words.
"No," he answered, "it is not that. It may seem quite absurd," he went on laboriously, "but I want to ask you to let me have your note-book. I have got a new one to give you in its place." He produced a packet from his pocket and held it out to her.
Later on, when she thought over the thing, she smiled. A note-book seemed so singularly unromantic, but at the time she felt nearer tears. The look in his eyes haunted her for many days. She had been the one glimpse of romance in his dreary existence, and she had had to kill the dream so ruthlessly.
CHAPTER XIV
| "It seems her heart was not washed clean Of tinted dreams of 'Might have been.'" |
Ruth Young.
There followed a weary time for Joan. The poem she had repeated on her first morning at Shamrock House had to be recalled again and again and fell away finally from its glad meaning in the bitter disillusionment which looking for work entailed. Wherein lay the value of cheerfulness when day after day saw her weary and dispirited from a fruitless search, from hope-chilling visits to registry offices, from unsuccessful applications in answer to the advertisements which thronged the morning papers? She went at it at first eagerly, hopefully. "To-day I shall succeed," was her waking motto. But every evening brought its tale of disappointment.