Joan had promised to go down on the Friday; but finding, on the Thursday morning, that it would be difficult, decided to run down that afternoon instead.  She thought at first of sending a wire.  But in Mrs. Phillips’s state of health, telegrams were perhaps to be avoided.  It could make no difference.  The front door of the little house was standing half open.  She called down the kitchen stairs to the landlady, but received no answer.  The woman had probably run out on some short errand.  She went up the stairs softly.  The bedroom door, she knew, would be open.  Mrs. Phillips had a feeling against being “shut off,” as she called it.  She meant to tap lightly and walk straight in, as usual.  But what she saw through the opening caused her to pause.  Mrs. Phillips was sitting up in bed with her box of cosmetics in front of her.  She was sensitive of anyone seeing her make-up; and Joan, knowing this, drew back a step.  But for some reason, she couldn’t help watching.  Mrs. Phillips dipped a brush into one of the compartments and then remained with it in her hand, as if hesitating.  Suddenly she stuck out her tongue and passed the brush over it.  At least, so it seemed to Joan.  It was only a side view of Mrs. Phillips’s face that she was obtaining, and she may have been mistaken.  It might have been the lips.  The woman gave a little gasp and sat still for a moment.  Then, putting away the brush, she closed the box and slipped it under the pillow.

Joan felt her knees trembling.  A cold, creeping fear was taking possession of her.  Why, she could not understand.  She must have been mistaken.  People don’t make-up their tongues.  It must have been the lips.  And even if not—­if the woman had licked the brush!  It was a silly trick people do.  Perhaps she liked the taste.  She pulled herself together and tapped at the door.

Mrs. Phillips gave a little start at seeing her; but was glad that she had come.  Phillips had not been down for two days and she had been feeling lonesome.  She persisted in talking more than Joan felt was good for her.  She was feeling so much better, she explained.  Joan was relieved when the nurse came back from her walk and insisted on her lying down.  She dropped to sleep while Joan and the nurse were having their tea.

Joan went back by the early train.  She met some people at the station that she knew and travelled up with them.  That picture of Mrs. Phillips’s tongue just showing beyond the line of Mrs. Phillips’s cheek remained at the back of her mind; but it was not until she was alone in her own rooms that she dared let her thoughts return to it.

The suggestion that was forcing itself into her brain was monstrous—­unthinkable.  That, never possessed of any surplus vitality, and suffering from the added lassitude of illness, the woman should have become indifferent—­willing to let a life that to her was full of fears and difficulties slip peacefully away from her, that was possible.  But that she should exercise thought and ingenuity—­that she should have reasoned the thing out and deliberately laid her plans, calculating at every point on their success; it was inconceivable.