"No. I do not care. It takes time to have the world tumble about your ears." "You--you--do not--love him, do you?" Joan paused and considered this as if it were a startlingly new idea. "Love him?--why, no. I'm sure I don't. But, Pat, what is it that seems like love, but isn't--you're sure it isn't--but it hurts and almost kills you?" The two young faces confronted each other blankly. "I don't know," Patricia said. "Nor I, Pat. But we've got to know. All women have unless they want to mess their own lives and the lives of men. They cannot be free until they do." Then Joan took hold of Patricia and exclaimed: "Pat, you are dripping wet. Come to bed." While helping Patricia to undress she talked excitedly of going away. "It's the only thing to do. This silly life is a waste of time. Why, Pat, we have been making all kinds of locks to keep ourselves shut away from freedom and the things we want. Some day we would want to get out and we could not. I am going to be free, Pat--not smudgy." Patricia paused in the act of getting into bed and remarked demurely: "My God! Out of the mouths of babes and pet lambs---- Come, child, shut your eyes. You make me crawl." CHAPTER XIX "_Queer--to think no day is like to a day that is past._" When Joan and Patricia arose the following day they confronted life as two criminals might who realized that their only safety lay in flight, and that they must escape without running risks. Patricia shuddered when the first mail was delivered. She rescued her own letter--addressed to Joan--and raised her heart in gratitude that no letter of angered remonstrance came from Burke. But he might _come_; he might telegraph! "My God!" Patricia exclaimed at noon time, "I cannot stand this, Joan, we must vacate." Joan was quivering with excitement, too--she was wild-eyed and shook with terror at every step on the stairs. Her ordeal of the day before had not merely devastated her beautiful dreams, but it had, in a marvellous fashion, created an entirely new outlook on life. She felt that once she was safe from any possible chance of meeting Raymond, he might, spiritually, rise from the ashes and eventually overcome the impression that would cling in spite of all she could do. Intellectually she understood--but her hurt and shocked sensibilities shrank from bodily contact with one who had forced the fruit of knowledge so crudely upon her. The youth in her seemed to have died, and it held all the charm and delight. The _woman_ of Joan made a plea for the man, but as yet he was a stranger. More strange, even, than the unnamable creature who had, for an hour, while the storm raged, stood in her imagination like some evil thing between the woman who had not fully understood and the woman who was never again to misunderstand.