"Have we? I don't think I have." Joan took another cigarette and
went back to her chair. Her small round shoulders looked very white
against the black of a velvet cushion. If there was nothing boyish
or unfeminine about her, there was certainly an indefinable
appearance of being untouched, unawakened. She was the same girl who
had been found by Martin that afternoon clean-cut against the sky--
the determined individualist.

Alice sat in front of her on a low stool with her hands clasped
round a knee. "What a queer mixture you are of--of town and country,
Joany. You're like a piece of honeysuckle playing at being an
orchid."

"That's because I'm a kid," said Joan. "The horrible hour will come
when I shall be an orchid and try and palm myself off as
honeysuckle, never fear."

"Don't you think marriage has changed you a little?" asked Alice.
"It usually does. It changed me from an empty-headed little fool to
a woman with oh, such a tremendous desire to be worthy of it."

"Yes, but then you married for love."

"Didn't you, Joany?"

"I? Marry for love?" Joan waved her arm for joy at the idea.

Alice knew the story of the escape from old age. She also knew from
the way in which Martin looked at Joan why he had given her his name