Elizabeth was silent, and Joan, who had not joined in this discussion, was suddenly impressed with what she felt might be the truth about Miss Lesway. Miss Lesway had the brain of a masterful man and the soul of a mother. Probably that untidy, art-serged body of hers was a perpetual battle-ground; no wonder it looked so dishevelled, trampled under as it must be by these two violent rival forces. "Well, I shall never marry!" Joan announced suddenly. Miss Lesway looked at her. Joan had expected an outburst, or at least a severe reproof, but, instead, the eyes that met hers were tired, compassionate and almost tender. Miss Lesway said: "No, I don't think you ever will. God help you!" 3 Everything was new and interesting and altogether delightful to Joan and Elizabeth during this visit. They played with the zest of truant schoolboys. No weather, however diabolical, could daunt them; they put on their mackintoshes and sallied forth in rain, sleet and mud. They got lost in a fog and found themselves in Kensington instead of Bloomsbury. They struggled furiously for overcrowded buses, or filled their lungs with sulphur in the Underground. They stood for hours at the pit doors of theatres, and walked in the British Museum until their feet ached. Joan developed a love of pictures, which she found she shared with Elizabeth, and the mornings that they spent in the galleries were some of their happiest. To Joan, beauty as portrayed by fine art came as a heavenly revelation; she knew for the first time the thrill of looking at someone else's inspired thoughts. "After all, everything is just thought," she said wisely. "They think, and then they clothe what they've thought in something; this happens to be paint and canvas, but it's all the same thing; thought must be clothed in something so that we can see it." Elizabeth watched her delightedly. She told herself that it was like putting a geranium cutting in the window; at first it was just all green, then came the little coloured buds and then the bloom. She felt that Joan was growing more in this fortnight than she had done in all her years at Seabourne; growing, expanding, coming nearer to her kingdom, day by day. 4 The fortnight passed all too quickly; it was going and then it was gone. They sat side by side in an empty third-class compartment, rushing back to Seabourne. Everything had changed suddenly for the worse. Their clothes struck them as shabby, now that it no longer mattered. In London, where it really had mattered, they had been quite contented with their appearance. Their bags, on the luggage rack opposite them, looked very worn and battered. How had they ever dared to go up to London at all? They and their possessions belonged so obviously to Seabourne. Joan took Elizabeth's hand. "Rotten, it's being over!" "Yes, it's been a good time, but we'll have lots more, Joan."