She began to feel better in health but sick in mind; Richard awoke so much in her that she had hoped was over and done with. He joked over the old days at Seabourne, in the hopeful, exuberant manner of a man who looks forward to the future. And all the while her heart ached intolerably for those days, the days that had held Elizabeth and her own youth. He seemed to be trying to make her talk too. "Do you remember all the medical books I used to send you, Joan?" or, "That was when you and Elizabeth were going to live together, wasn't it?" He discussed Elizabeth as a matter of course, and because of this Joan found it difficult to speak of her at all. She began to be obsessed with a craving to see her again, to talk to her and hear her voice; the thought of the miles that would always lie between them grew intolerable. This woman who had known her since she was a little child, who had fashioned her, loved her and then cast her out, lived again in her thoughts with all the old vitality. "I shall die without seeing her," was a phrase that ran constantly in her brain; "I shall die without ever seeing Elizabeth again."
Richard observed the sunburn on her cheeks and felt happier. He believed that his method was the right one, and dug assiduously among Joan's memories. He was convinced that she had been very near a nervous breakdown when he had found her, and congratulated himself on what he thought was a change for the better. Her reticence when Elizabeth was mentioned only served to make him speak of her the more. "No good letting the thing remain submerged," he thought; "she must be made to talk about it."
In spite of the mental unrest that possessed her, or perhaps because of it, Joan looked forward to the long days spent on the moors, the long drives in the car through the narrow, twisting lanes. Richard was an excellent companion, always amusing and sympathetic, and there was a painful fascination in talking over the old days. His eyes were kind when he looked at her, and his hand felt strong and protective as he helped her in and out of the car. She thought, as she had done a long time ago, what an adorable brother he would have made.
Sometimes he would tell her about his work, going into technical details as though she too were a doctor. When he spoke of a case which particularly interested him, he gesticulated, like the Richard of twenty years ago.
"How little you've changed," she said one day.
He replied: "We none of us really change, Joan, except on the surface."
"I've changed, Richard; the whole of me has."
"Oh, no, you haven't; you're all of you there, only you've pushed some of it away out of sight."
She wondered if he were right. Was it possible that all that had once made Joan Ogden, was lurking somewhere in her still? She shuddered. "I don't want to go back!" she said fiercely. "Oh, Richard, I don't want ever to go back!"
"Not back, but forward," he corrected. "Just go forward with your whole self."