Joan was very nervous. She stood, a little grey shadow in the grey room, her hands twisting and untwisting. She was nervous because she was going to say good-bye to Johnny, perhaps for ever, and she wasn't sure that she'd have the strength to do it. Suddenly he was there with her in the room, big and clumsy and cheerful, quite unaware apparently that he was never, after this, to see Joan again. He tried to kiss her but she prevented him. "No, you must sit over there," she said, "and we must never, at least not probably for years and years, kiss one another again." He was aware, as she spoke, of quite a new, a different Joan; he had been conscious of this new Joan on many occasions during these last weeks. When he had first known her she had been a child and he had loved her for her childishness; now he must meet the woman and the child together, and instinctively he was himself more serious in his attitude to her. "We could talk much better, Joan dear," he said, "if we were close together." "No," she said; "then I couldn't talk at all. We mustn't meet alone again after to-day, and we mustn't write, and we mustn't consider ourselves engaged." "Why, please?" "Can't you see that it's all impossible? We've tried it now for weeks and it becomes more impossible every day. Your mother's absolutely against it and always will be--and now at home--here--my mother----" She broke off. He couldn't leave her like that; he sprang up, went across to her, put his arms around her, and kissed her. She didn't resist him nor move from him, but when she spoke again her voice was firmer and more resolved than before. "No, Johnny, I mean it, I can think of nothing now but father. So long as he's alive I must stay with him. He's quite alone now, he has nobody. I can't even think about you so long as he's like this, so unwell and so unhappy. It isn't as though I were very clever or old or anything. I've never until lately been allowed to do anything all my life, not the tiniest bit of housekeeping, and now suddenly it has all come. And if I were thinking of you, wanting to see you, having letters from you, I shouldn't attend to this; I shouldn't be able to think of it----" "Do you still love me?" "Why, of course. I shall never change." "And do you think that I still love you?" "Yes." "And do you think I'll change?" "You may. But I don't want to think so." "Well, then, the main question is settled. It doesn't matter how long we wait." "But it _does_ matter. It may be for years and years. You've got to marry, you can't just stay unmarried because one day you may marry me." "Can't I? You wait and see whether I can't." "But you oughtn't to, Johnny. Think of your family. Think of your mother. You're the only son."