"Face-powder--what most girls use. Your skin wouldn't get red and shiny
like that if you had some powder on it."

"I'd never dream of using such a thing. I'd be ashamed."

"Why be ashamed of looking decent?"

"I wouldn't look decent--I'd look like a hussy. Sometimes when I see
these gals' faces I--"

"Really, Jo, to hear you speak one ud think you were the only virtuous
woman left in England. But there are just one or two things in your
career, my child, which don't quite bear out that notion."

Joanna's heart gave a sudden bound, then seemed to freeze.

She leaned forward in her chair, staring at the advertisements on the
curtain. Bertie put his arm round her--"I say, ole girl, you ain't angry
with me, are you?" She made no reply--she could not speak; too much was
happening in her thoughts--had happened, rather, for her mind was now
quite made up. A vast, half-conscious process seemed suddenly to have
settled itself, leaving her quite clear-headed and calm.

"You ain't angry with me, are you?" repeated Bert.

"No," said Joanna--"I'm not angry with you."

He had been cruel and selfish when she was in trouble, he had shown no
tenderness for her physical fatigue, and now at last he had taunted her
with the loss of her respectability for his sake. But she was not angry
with him.... It was only that now she knew she could never, never marry
him.

Sec.31

That night she slept heavily--the deep sleep of physical exhaustion and
mental decision. The unconscious striving of her soul no longer woke her
to ask her hard questions. Her mind was made up, and her conflict was at
an end.

She woke at the full day, when down on Walland Marsh all the world was
awake, but here the city and the house still slept, and rose with her
eyes and heart full of tragic purpose. She dressed quickly, then packed
her box--all the gay, grand things she had brought to make her lover
proud of her. Then she sat down at her dressing-table, and wrote--

"DEAR BERTIE,--When you get this I shall have gone for good. I see
now that we were not meant for each other. I am very sorry if this
gives you pain. But it is all for the best.--Your sincere friend,

"JOANNA GODDEN."

By this time it was half-past seven by the good gold watch which Poor
Father had left her. Joanna's plan was to go downstairs, put her letter
on the hall table, and bribe the girl to help her down with her box and
call a cab, before any of the ot