"You mean the flat? Yes, it's my birthday present to you—aren't you pleased, Joan?"
"Elizabeth," Joan tried to speak quietly, "you shouldn't have done this until we'd talked things over again; when did you sign the lease?"
Elizabeth stiffened. "That's not the point," she said quickly. "The point is what do you mean about talking things over again? Our plans were decided long ago."
Joan faltered. "Don't get angry, Elizabeth, only listen; I don't know how to say it, you paralyse me, I'm afraid of you!"
"Afraid of me?"
"Yes, of you; terribly, horribly afraid of you and of myself. Elizabeth, it's my mother; I don't see how I can leave her, now that Milly's gone. Wait; you've no idea how helpless she is. She seems ill, and we never keep a servant, these days—what would she do all alone in the house? She depends so much on me; why, since Father's death she can't even keep the tradesmen's books in order, and with no one to look after her I think she'd ruin herself, she seems to have lost all idea about money. We must wait just a little longer in any case, say a year. Elizabeth, don't look like that! Perhaps she'll pull herself together, I don't know; all I know is that I can't come now——" She paused, catching her breath.
Elizabeth had come close and was standing over her, looking down with inscrutable eyes. "Her eyes look like the sea in a mist," Joan thought helplessly, reverting to the old habit of drawing comparisons. But Elizabeth was speaking in a calm, cold voice.
"I see," she was saying. "You've changed your mind. You don't want to come and live with me, after all; perhaps the idea is distasteful to you? Of course we should be dirt poor."
Joan sprang up, shaking with anger. "You know you're lying!" she said.
Elizabeth smiled. "Am I? Oh no, I don't think so, Joan. It's all quite clear, surely. I've been a fool, that's all; only I think it would have been better, worthier, to have been frank with me from the first. I will not wait a year, or a month, for that matter; either you come now or I shall go."