peering up through his glasses to see the name of the street; and Joan
caught sight of his face beneath a gas lamp.

And suddenly it came to her that it was a face she knew. In the dim-lit
church she had not seen him clearly. He was still peering upward. Joan
stole another glance. Yes, she had met him somewhere. He was very
changed, quite different, but she was sure of it. It was a long time
ago. She must have been quite a child.




CHAPTER II


One of Joan's earliest recollections was the picture of herself standing
before the high cheval glass in her mother's dressing-room. Her clothes
lay scattered far and wide, falling where she had flung them; not a shred
of any kind of covering was left to her. She must have been very small,
for she could remember looking up and seeing high above her head the two
brass knobs by which the glass was fastened to its frame. Suddenly, out
of the upper portion of the glass, there looked a scared red face. It
hovered there a moment, and over it in swift succession there passed the
expressions, first of petrified amazement, secondly of shocked
indignation, and thirdly of righteous wrath. And then it swooped down
upon her, and the image in the glass became a confusion of small naked
arms and legs mingled with green cotton gloves and purple bonnet strings.

"You young imp of Satan!" demanded Mrs. Munday--her feelings of outraged
virtue exaggerating perhaps her real sentiments. "What are you doing?"