you rest a bit?"

Cicely rose up briskly.

"I'll come along," she said. "A walk will do me good. The air's so
cruel close up here."

Joan hesitated.

"I'm a fast walker," she said, "and I go far."

But Cicely, who divined something of the truth, hesitated no longer, not
even for a second.

"I will come," she said.

* * * * *

They passed out into the streets, and the younger girl knew from the
first that their walk was a quest. They chose the most frequented
thoroughfares, and where the throng was thickest there only they
lingered. There was a new look in the face of the elder girl, a grim
tightening of the lips, a curious doggedness about the jaws, a light in
the black eyes which made her sister shudder to look upon. For there
were in Joan Strong, daughter of many generations of north country
yeomen, the possibilities of tragedy, a leaven of that passionate
resistless force, which when once kindled is no more to be governed than
the winds. Narrow she was, devoid of imagination, and uneducated, yet,
married to the man whom she had boldly and persistently sought after,
she would have been a faithful housewife, after the fashion of her kind.
But with the tragedy in her home, the desertion of the man whom she had
selected for her husband, another woman had leaped into life. Something
in her nature had been touched which, in an ordinary case, would have
lain dormant for ever. Cicely knew it and was terrified. This was her
sister, and yet a stranger with whom she walked, this steadfast,
untiring figure, ever with her eyes mutely questioning the passing
throngs. They had become a great way removed during these last few
weeks, and, save her sister, there was no one else left in the world.
With aching feet and tears in her eyes, Cicely kept pace as well as she
could with the untiring, relentless figure by her side. Many people
looked at them curiously--the tall, Cassandra-like figure of the elder
woman, and the pretty, slight girl struggling to keep pace with her, her
lips quivering, her eyes so obviously full of fear. The loiterers on
the pavement stared. Joan's fierce, untiring eyes took no more notice
of them than if they had been dumb figures. Cicely was continually
shrinking back from glances half familiar, half challenging. More than
once they were openly accosted, but Joan swept such attempts away with
stony indifference. For hour after hour they walked steadily on--then,
with a