What had become of her powers of observation, her cool intelligence, her impersonal decision that it was wiser not to love the man you marry lest he be given power to hurt you? There was nothing impersonal left in her feeling for Eduard Desmond! The change had come as suddenly as a summer thunderstorm. At one moment she was waiting, nervous, a little afraid, for the event that she had brought to pass. The next, he and she seemed to have been thrown into a sort of vortex, where they clung to each other madly, desperately, as if to escape destruction. And she had been quite as frantic about it as the man.... She thought, dazedly, that there was a good deal she would be able to tell the girls at the Convent now on the subject of proposals--yes, and Miss Louisa M. Alcott, too! Except that school-girls and literary old maids were not exactly the people with whom one would discuss such phenomena-- They had fancied, she and Betty and the rest, that some sort of formula was necessary to the occasion, a definite question asked and answered, a more or less formal, "Will you, Amy?" and "Yes, Laurie." Foolish innocents! She and Ned had not exchanged a sensible word from the moment they found themselves in each other's arms. Yet the understanding between them was unmistakable. They were completely engaged--almost, Joan thought with a shiver, as good as married! This, then, was love. A very different thing from what she had expected! A beautiful, rather terrible thing.... The touch of Puritan in the girl made her wonder whether anything so beautiful and terrible could be quite nice. She slipped to her knees; not to pray, but simply to remember her mother. The vision of her mother always came better when she was on her knees--perhaps because of the old-time association of prayers with bedtime--and Joan felt a desperate need of her just then. She wanted to be assured that her mother understood, and had been through it all herself, and had come out of it--just her mother. She held out her jeweled bracelet childishly in the dark, as if for somebody to see. She knelt there tense, every nerve and fibre straining, whispering under her breath, "Mamma, are you here? Do you know?" But the vision failed her. She had instead the warmth of a man's breath on her closed eyes, the roughness of his cheek on her throat.... She dropped her head in her arms and began to sob. She was very happy. CHAPTER XVII It was well into the middle of a fine blue and gold morning when Joan awoke, to find her coffee cold on the tray beside her bed. She had slept through even the entrance of the maid who called her; she who had expected not to sleep at all! An engaged girl, with her lover waiting--in the garden, perhaps, or down beside the river--their river! The happiness of the night before came to her with a rush, and with it an enormous sense of relief. The thing was done, accomplished!