The silver clock upon her desk struck six.  It had been a gift from her father when she was at Girton.  It never obtruded.  Its voice was a faint musical chime that she need not hear unless she cared to listen.  She turned and looked at it.  It seemed to be a little face looking back at her out of its two round, blinkless eyes.  For the first time during all the years that it had watched beside her, she heard its quick, impatient tick.

She sat motionless, staring at it.  The problem, in some way, had simplified itself into a contest between herself, demanding time to think, and the little insistent clock, shouting to her to act upon blind impulse.  If she could remain motionless for another five minutes, she would have won.

The ticking of the little clock was filling the room.  The thing seemed to have become alive—­to be threatening to burst its heart.  But the thin, delicate indicator moved on.

Suddenly its ticking ceased.  It had become again a piece of lifeless mechanism.  The hands pointed to six minutes past.  Joan took off her hat and laid it aside.

She must think the whole thing over quietly.

CHAPTER XIV

She could help him.  Without her, he would fail.  The woman herself saw that, and wished it.  Why should she hesitate?  It was not as if she had only herself to consider.  The fate—­the happiness of millions was at stake.  He looked to her for aid—­for guidance.  It must have been intended.  All roads had led to it.  Her going to the house.  She remembered now, it was the first door at which she had knocked.  Her footsteps had surely been directed.  Her meeting with Mrs. Phillips in Madge’s rooms; and that invitation to dinner, coinciding with that crisis in his life.  It was she who had persuaded him to accept.  But for her he would have doubted, wavered, let his opportunities slip by.  He had confessed it to her.

And she had promised him.  He needed her.  The words she had spoken to Madge, not dreaming then of their swift application.  They came back to her.  “God has called me.  He girded His sword upon me.”  What right had she to leave it rusting in its scabbard, turning aside from the pathway pointed out to her because of one weak, useless life, crouching in her way.  It was not as if she were being asked to do evil herself that good might come.  The decision had been taken out of her hands.  All she had to do was to remain quiescent, not interfering, awaiting her orders.  Her business was with her own part, not with another’s.  To be willing to sacrifice oneself:  that was at the root of all service.  Sometimes it was one’s own duty, sometimes that of another.  Must one never go forward because another steps out of one’s way, voluntarily?  Besides, she might have been mistaken.  That picture, ever before her, of the woman pausing with the brush above her tongue—­that little stilled gasp!  It may have been but a phantasm, born of her own fevered imagination.  She clung to that, desperately.