“I suppose so. I have hardly thought of it. Yes, I suppose I keep the Stephen.... I am husbanding this money. I have only that between me and starvation, if anything happened, you know. What I have passed through is not the best thing for one’s health. Meanwhile, I am trying to get work. It is a bit hopeless. I know I ought to go out of England, but London is in my blood somehow. I am loth to leave it. Besides, what should I do in the colonies? I am not fit for hard manual labour. They tried it in there, and I broke down; I made sacks and helped in the kitchen most of my time. If I could earn a pound a week in London, I should n’t care. It would keep body and soul together. Why I should want to keep them together I don’t know. I suppose my spirit is broken, and I am too apathetic to commit suicide. If I had the spirit of a louse I should do so. But I haven’t.” He stopped speaking and remained with his head bowed in his hands. Yvonne could find no words to reply. His almost brutal terseness had given her a momentary perception of his self-abasement which surprised and frightened her. Generous and tender-hearted as she was, she had ever found men insoluble enigmas. They knew so much, had so many strange wants, seemed to exist in a world of ideas, feelings, and actions beyond her ken. Here was one with nameless experiences and shames. She shrank a few inches along the seat, not from repulsion, but from a sudden sense of her own incapacity of comprehension. She felt tongue-tied and helpless. So there was a short silence. Joyce noticed the lack of spontaneous sympathy, and, raising a haggard face, said:-- “I have shocked you.” “You talk so strangely,” said Yvonne--“as if you had a stone instead of a heart.” “Forgive me,” he said, softening at the sight of her distress. “I am ungrateful to you. I ought to be happy to-day. I will be happy. I should like to bend down and kiss your feet for sitting here with me.” The change in his tone brought the colour back into Yvonne’s face and the sun into her eyes. She was a creature of quick impulses. “Have I really made you happy? I am so glad. I seem to be always trying to make people happy and never succeeding.” “They must be strange people you have dealt with,” said Joyce with a weary smile. She shrugged her shoulders expressively. “I suppose it is that other people are so strange and I am so ordinary.” “You are the kindest, sunniest soul on earth,” said Joyce. “You always were.” “Oh, how can you say so?” she cried, shaking her head. She was all brightness again. “I am such an insignificant little person. Everything about me seems so small. I have a small body, a small voice, a small sphere, a small mind, and oh! I live in such a small, tiny flat. You must come and see me. I will sing to you--that is my one small talent--and perhaps that will cheer you. You must be so lonely!” “Why are you so good to me?” Joyce asked.