"I have come back, Miss Joan."
"Yes?" she answers, sitting down with an attempt to still the tumult within, with such success that she brings herself for the moment nearly to the frame of mind in which they parted, and there is the same weary sufferance in her tone.
"I have come back as I said I would. I have overstepped the three months, but I had a good reason for my delay. Indeed I have been in doubt whether I ought to see you again at all, only I could not bear you to think what you naturally would. I felt that I must see you, even if it cost us both pain." There is a new awkwardness in his tone and pose.
"I told you that it was--quite unnecessary--and useless," she answers, with a strange tightening in her throat.
"Then it can do you no harm," he assents quietly. "I have come back not to repeat my petition, but to tell you why I do not and cannot."
"I think," she puts in coldly, "that upon the whole you had better spare yourself the unpleasantness of explaining anything to me. Don't you think so? I asked you for no proof, and held out no hope. Why do you trouble me? Why have you come back?"
"You have not changed!"
For the first time a ring of contempt in her voice takes the place of cold indifference. "I do not change in three months, Mr. Maitland. But there! my mother will wish to see you, and so will Agnes, who is hankering after something to happen. They are in the drawing room."
"But, Miss Joan, grant me one moment! You have not heard my reasons."
"Your reasons! Is it absolutely necessary?" she asks, half fretfully, half scornfully; her uppermost thought an intense desire to be by herself in her own room, with the door safely locked.