"Well, it is this theatre game." Dick plunged in boldly once the subject had been started. "You don't like it, you know, and you aren't a bit suited to it. Sometimes when I see you dance and hear the people clapping you I could go out and say things--really nasty things." "You don't like it?" she said. "I have tried to do other things too," she went on quickly, "but you know I am not awfully much good at anything. When I first started in London, it is two years ago now, I used to boast about having put my hand to the plough. I used to say I wouldn't turn back from my own particular furrow, however dull and ugly it was. But I haven't been very much use at it, I have failed over and over again." "There are failures and failures," he answered. "There was a book I read once, I don't remember its name or much about it, but there was a sentence in it that stuck in my mind: 'Real courage, means courage to stand up against the shocks of life--sorrow and pain and separation, and still have the force left to make of the remainder something fine and gay and brave.' I think you have still got that sort of courage left." "No," whispered Joan. She looked away from him, for her eyes were miserably full of tears. "I haven't even got that left." They had tea, the four of them, for strange to tell Fanny did deem it expedient to keep her promise, and it was after tea that Dick first mooted the idea of their coming out to tea with his people the next day. Fanny was prompt in her acceptance. "Of course we'll come, won't we, honey," she said. "My new muslin will just come in for it." "It won't be a party," Dick explained, his eyes were on Joan, "just the mother and my sister. Not very lively I am afraid, still it is a pretty place and I'll drive you both ways." He came to the theatre again that night. Fanny pointed him out to Joan in a little aside as she stood beside her in the wings, but Joan had already seen him for herself. She could put no heart into her dancing that night, and she ran off the stage quickly when the music ceased, not waiting to take her applause. "Feeling ill to-night?" Daddy Brown asked her. He eyed her at the same time somewhat sternly; he disapproved of signs of weakness in any of the company. "I suppose I am tired," Joan answered. Only her own heart knew that it was because a certain couple of blue eyes had shown her that they wished she would not dance. "I am getting into a ridiculous state," she argued to herself; "why should it matter to me what he thinks? It must not, it must not." "You did not dance at all well to-night, honey," Fanny added her meed of blame as the two of them were undressing for the night. "But there, I know what is wrong with you. You are in love, bless your heart, and so is he. Never took his eyes off you while you were dancing, my dear--I watched him."