Later, Ellen walked out with her through the languorous summer evening to the house which she never called home. Nothing more had been said between them of the loss of her independence; but the girl felt soothed and comforted, strengthened as the heart is always strengthened in the presence of a deep though inarticulate devotion. She slipped her hand into the other's thin arm, and so linked they walked along without much talk between them, listening as they passed to pleasant sounds from many a shadowed porch and garden, guitar music, singing, the inevitable hushed murmur of boy and girl voices commingled, which is as natural to a summer gloaming as the twitter of birds in spring. There came again to Joan, for the first time in weeks, something of the glamour, the sense of promise, which had touched her in the summer past when she walked at night with her father through the strange city where he had once been young. It was as if Romance brushed her in passing with shadowy skirts, and Joan felt that she must catch at them, cling to them, before it was too late. Youth is so short, so short!... Ellen, too, felt the witchery of the soft night; but to the Ellens, Romance comes only vicariously. "Joie," she said after a long silence, "ain't it time you was having some steady company yourself, child?" The girl did not smile at the phrase. It voiced too well her own secret thoughts. There had been something strangely unreal, unnatural, about the past weeks. She had brought nothing out of her experience with life so far, not even a friend--for Stefan Nikolai was merely an inheritance. "You're right," she said soberly "I suppose I ought to have a 'steady company' at least by this time. That ought to be simple enough!--Marriage is about the only thing left for a girl in my position, isn't it?" "Who's talking about marriage? You don't have to marry every fellow you walk out with, I should hope," said Ellen surprisingly. "I've walked out with quite a few myself!... But as to gettin' married, Jo--it's about the only thing for a girl in any position, I guess, even if she finds out afterwards that she's picked a lemon. Lemons are better than nothing." "Why, Mrs. Neal!" laughed Joan. "What sentiments from a confirmed spinster-person!" To which Ellen replied quietly, "It's the spinsters who know." CHAPTER XII