taking in the comfort and joy of every proof of love that she
saw.

On the desk by the window lay a pile of unopened letters--she took them
up. They were the letters from Doris and Nancy which had been returned
from Chicago. Pitiful things that had been so hopefully sent forth only
to come back like blighted hopes!

For a moment Joan contemplated throwing them all on the fire. She did
not feel equal to re-living the past. It was only by laughing and
singing that she could hold her own.

But on second thought she opened the first one--it was from Nancy.

"I better have all I can get to begin on," she reflected; "it will save
time."

She sat down in a deep chair and presently she was aware of combating
something that was being impressed upon her; she was not conscious of
reading it.

"Such things do not happen--not in life----" her sane, cautious self
seemed to say. For a second Joan believed her tired brain was playing
her false as it had during those awful weeks in the hospital. She closed
her eyes; grew calm--then tried again:

Since you are not coming to see Ken now, Joan, I will try to
describe him. You remember old Mrs. Tweksbury? Well, my dear boy
belongs, in a way, to her----

Again Joan closed her eyes while a faintness saved her from too acute
shock. She felt the soft air upon her face; she was conscious of that
bewildered whine of poor Cuff. Vaguely she thought that he must be
hungry; thirsty--then there was a moment's blank and--the sickening
weakness was gone!

With the strength and clarity that sometimes comes at a critical moment
Joan's mind worked fast and carried her where hours of quiet thought
could not have done.

It was natural, of course, that Nancy should meet Raymond--the most
natural thing in the world.

His loving her--so soon after what had happened! That was the thing that
gripped and hurt. Joan tried to connect the date of that night in the
studio and the one on Nancy's letter. She seemed powerless to do so--the
time between was a blank; there was no time! Everything belonged to a
previous incarnation.

With a shudder, Joan presently realized the insignificant part she had
borne in Kenneth Raymond's life.

The humiliation turned her hot and cold. He had always held but one
opinion of her; his loss of self-control had simply torn down the
defences behind which he had played with her, amused himself with her,
during the dull summer.

She was, to him, one of the wo