"No," said Joan emphatically, "it isn't. Richard asked me to marry him to-day and I refused."
Mrs. Ogden burst into tears; her weeping was loud and unrestrained; she hid her head on the girl's shoulder. "Oh, Joan—my Joan——" she sobbed. "Oh, Joan, I am so glad!"
Now she did not care what she said, the years of unwilling restraint melted away; she clung to the girl fiercely, possessively, murmuring words of endearment. Joan took her in her arms and rocked her like a child. "There, there!" she whispered.
Presently Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes, her face was ugly from weeping. "It's the thought of losing you," she gasped. "I can't face the thought of that—and other things; you know what I mean, the thought of your being maltreated by a man, the thought that it might happen to you as it happened to me. You see, you've always seemed to make up for it all, what I missed in James I more than found in you. I know I'm tiresome, my darling, I know I'm not strong and that I often worry you, but, oh Joan, if you only knew how much I love you. I've wanted to tell you so, often, but it didn't seem right somehow, but you do understand, don't you, my darling? Joan, say you understand, say you love me."
Somewhere in the back of Joan's mind came a faint echo: did she love her? But it died almost immediately.
"You poor, poor darling," she said, "of course I understand, and love you."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1
RICHARD was faithful to his promise. Large brown paper parcels of books began to arrive from Cambridge; Joan and Elizabeth studied them together. The weariness of the days was gone for Joan; with the advent of her medical books she grew confident once more, she felt her foot already on the first rung of the ladder.
At this time Elizabeth strove for Joan as she had never striven before. Joan did not guess how often her friend sat up into the small hours of the morning struggling to master some knotty point in their new studies. How she wrestled with anatomy, with bones and muscles and circulatory systems, with lobes and hemispheres and convolutions, until she began to wonder how it could be possible that anyone retained health and sanity, considering the delicate and complicated nature of the instrument upon which they depended. A good many of the books dealt with diseases of the nerves and brain, and Joan found them more fascinating and interesting than she had imagined possible. Poor Elizabeth had some ado to keep pace with her pupil's enthusiasm. She strained every nerve to understand and be helpful; she joined a library in London and started a line of private study, the better to fit her for the task in hand. She gloried in the difficulties to be surmounted, and felt that this work was invested with a peculiar significance, almost a sanctity. It was as though she were helping Joan towards the Holy Grail of freedom.