"It seems her heart was not washed clean Of tinted dreams of 'Might have been.'" RUTH YOUNG. There followed a weary time for Joan. The poem she had repeated on her first morning at Shamrock House had to be recalled again and again and fell away finally from its glad meaning in the bitter disillusionment which looking for work entailed. Wherein lay the value of cheerfulness when day after day saw her weary and dispirited from a fruitless search, from hope-chilling visits to registry offices, from unsuccessful applications in answer to the advertisements which thronged the morning papers? She went at it at first eagerly, hopefully. "To-day I shall succeed," was her waking motto. But every evening brought its tale of disappointment. "There is no one in the world as useless as I am," she thought finally. "It is only just a bad season," Rose Brent tried to cheer her up; "there is lots of unemployment about; we will find something for you soon." But to Joan it seemed as if the iron of being absolutely unwanted was entering into her soul. There was only one shred of comfort in all this dreariness. Life at Shamrock House was so cheap that she was eating up but very little of Uncle John's allowance. She wondered sometimes if the old people at home ever asked at the Bank as to how her money matters stood, or had they shut her so completely out of their lives that even that was of no interest to them? Miss Abercrombie wrote fairly regularly, but though she could give Joan news of the home people she had to admit that Aunt Janet never mentioned or alluded to her niece in any way. "She is harder than I thought she could be," wrote Miss Abercrombie; "or is it perhaps that you have killed her heart?" Once Joan's pride fell so low that she found herself writing Aunt Janet a pathetic, vague appeal to be allowed to creep back into the shelter of the old life. But she tore the letter up in the morning and scattered its little pieces along the gutter of Digby Street. Digby Street was sucking into its undercurrents her youth, her cheerfulness, her hope; only pride was left, she must make a little struggle to hold on to pride, and then news came from Miss Abercrombie that Aunt Janet had been ill and that the Rutherfords had gone abroad. Apart from her fruitless journeys in search of work, her days held nothing. She so dreaded the atmosphere of Shamrock House that very often she would have to walk herself tired out of all feeling before she could go back there; sometimes she cried night after night, weak, stupid tears, shut up in the dreariness of her little room, and very often her thoughts turned back to Gilbert--the comfort of their little flat, the theatres, the suppers, the dances and the passion-held nights when he had loved her. More and more she thought of Gilbert as the dreariness of Digby Street closed round her days.