"Damn!" muttered Eduard, and shortly took his leave. But first he gave her a note from Mrs. Desmond urging her to dine with them on any evening she cared to name. "Betty is abroad," wrote Mrs. Desmond, "and I know you have no heart for gaieties just now, so there will be only the four of us, a family party." Joan hesitated. "Of course we all realize that you are not in a mood for gaiety," said Eduard with a sympathetic glance at her black. "But I _must_ see you somehow!--and among old friends, who understand--" To ward off any mention of things that hurt, she hastily agreed to dine with the Desmonds on the following Saturday. Sister Veronica, (who happened to be quite deaf) wondered what could have occurred to give the poor child such an expression of--not exactly pleasure. It was more like triumph. She would have made no sense of what Joan was muttering under her breath, Salome-wise, as she left the parlor: "Off with his head! Oh, off with his head, _and step on it_!" CHAPTER XLIV Not only the older girls, but more than one of the nuns, made some excuse to come into Joan's little room when she was dressing that Saturday evening. The rumor had gone forth that their charge was beginning to take interest in worldly affairs again, and the good ladies congratulated each other. While they themselves had forsworn the pleasures of the world, they were quite aware that for some these had their uses, if only as an anodyne. They took, too, a quite feminine pleasure in Joan's frock, a simple black chiffon with transparent sleeves, which she had cut out a little at the neck to make it suitable for the evening. "I suppose," said the Reverend Mother, making her turn round and round for inspection, "that this is what they call in the world a décolleté basque, is it not? And very becoming, too! Only"--she added with the frank conventual innocence that occasionally startled Joan, "does not such a display of the person tend to encourage lust of the eye, my child?" Joan laughed a little. "Let us hope so, Mother!" she murmured. "We strive to please"--a remark which the old lady trusted that she had misunderstood. Her striving on that occasion was by no means in vain. There seems something peculiarly alluring to the masculine taste (as women of the oldest profession in the world are quite aware) about black. Joan, with nothing to relieve her somberness except a cluster of white gardenias at her breast, would have held the gaze of any man who saw her as surely as she held that of Eduard and of Betty's father, who had hitherto not known his daughter's friend and openly regretted his missed opportunity. She was one of the women whom motherhood, even denied and thwarted motherhood, gives a momentary poignant beauty, of the sort that Leonardo loved to paint. Betty's father was indeed so regretful of his missed opportunity that it was with some difficulty Eduard secured the tête-à-tête upon which he had counted.