When she was alone Joan sat and gazed not at her wall but at the pictures that came back to her out of a part of her life which seemed to have been lived centuries ago. They were the pictures that came back continually without being called, the clearness of which always startled her afresh. Sometimes she thought they sprang up to add to her torment, but sometimes it seemed as if they came to save her from herself--her mad, wicked self. After all, there were moments when to know that she _had_ been the girl whose eighteen-year-old heart had leaped so when she turned and met Jem’s eyes, as he stood gazing at her under the beech-tree, was something to cling to. She had been that girl and Jem had been--Jem. Her throat strained itself because sobs rose in it, and her eyes were hot with the swell of tears. She could hear voices and laughter and the click of balls from the billiard-room. Her mother and Palliser laughed the most, but she knew the sound of her mother’s voice would cease soon, because she would come back to her. She knew the kind of scene they would pass through together when she returned. The old things would be said, the old arguments used, but a new one would be added. It was at once horrible and ridiculous that she must sit and listen--and stare at the growing wall. It was as she caught her breath against the choking swell of tears that she heard Lady Mallowe returning. She came in with an actual sweep across the room. Her society air had fled, and she was unadornedly furious when she stopped before Joan’s chair. For a few seconds she actually glared; then she broke forth in a suppressed undertone. “Come into the billiard-room. I command it!” Joan lifted her eyes from her book. Her voice was as low as her mother’s, but steadier. “No,” she answered. “Is this conduct to continue? Is it?” Lady Mallowe panted. “Yes,” said Joan, and laid her book on the table near her. There was nothing else to say. Words made things worse. Lady Mallowe had lost her head, but she still spoke in the suppressed voice. “You _shall_ behave yourself!” she cried, under her breath, and actually made a passionate half-start toward her. “Wouldn’t it be wise to remember that you cannot make the kind of scene here that you can in your own house?” said Joan. “We are a bad-tempered pair. But when we are guests in other people’s houses--” “You think you can take advantage of that!” she said. “Don’t trust yourself too far. Do you imagine that just when all might go well for me I will allow you to spoil everything?” “How can I spoil everything?” “By behaving as you have been behaving since we came here--refusing to make a home for yourself; by hanging round my neck so that it will appear that any one who takes me must take you also. I came in here to tell you,” she went on, “that this is your last chance. I shall never give you another.”