Joan looked at her. She stood there, tall and neat, in the road; the dust on her shoes seemed an impertinence, as though it had no right to blemish the carefully polished leather. Her eyes were full of an inscrutable expression, her lips a little parted as though about to ask a question. "If it's devotion you want," said Joan gruffly, "then you've got all I've got to give." There was a little silence, and when Elizabeth spoke it was in her matter-of-fact voice. She said, "I not only want your devotion but I need it, and I want more than that; I want your work, your independence, your success. I want to take them so that I can give them back to you, so that I can look at you and say, 'I did this thing, I found Joan and I gave her the best I had to give, freedom and----'" she paused, "'and happiness.'" They turned and clasped hands, walking silently home towards Seabourne. 4 Mrs. Ogden was watching from the dining-room window as she often watched for Joan. Her pale face, peering between the lace curtains, had grown to fill the girl with a combined sense of irritation and pity. She called Joan into the room and closed the door. Joan knew from her mother's manner that something was about to happen, it was full of a suppressed excitement. Without a word she led Joan to the sofa and made her sit beside her; she took the girl's face between her two cold hands and gazed into her eyes. Then she began. "Joan, darling, I want to talk to you. I've wanted to have a serious talk with you for some time. You're not a child any longer, you're nearly a woman now; it seems so strange to me, for somehow I always think of you as my little Joan. That's the way of mothers, I suppose; they find it difficult to realize that their children can ever grow up, but you have grown up and it's likely that you'll fall in love some day--perhaps want to marry, and there are things that I think it my duty to tell you----" She paused. "Facts about life," she concluded awkwardly. Her conscience stirred uneasily, she felt almost afraid of what she was about to do, but she thrust the feeling down. "It _is_ my duty, I'm doing it for Joan's sake," she told herself. "I'm doing it for her sake and _not_ for my own." Joan sat very still, she wondered what was coming; her mother's eyes looked eager and shy and she was a little flushed. Mrs. Ogden began to speak again in quick jerks, she turned her face slightly aside showing the delicate line of her profile, her hands moved incessantly, plaiting and unplaiting the fringed trimming on her dress.