“But I’m so useless,” pleaded the woman.

“I said that,” answered Joan.  “I wanted to do it and I talked and talked, so hard.  I said everything I could think of.  But that was the only answer:  I mustn’t do it.”

They remained for a while with their arms round one another.  It struck Joan as curious, even at the time, that all feeling of superiority had gone out of her.  They might have been two puzzled children that had met one another on a path that neither knew.  But Joan was the stronger character.

“I want you to give me up that box,” she said, “and to come away with me where I can be with you and take care of you until you are well.”

Mrs. Phillips made yet another effort.  “Have you thought about him?” she asked.

Joan answered with a faint smile.  “Oh, yes,” she said.  “I didn’t forget that argument in case it hadn’t occurred to the Lord.”

“Perhaps,” she added, “the helpmate theory was intended to apply only to our bodies.  There was nothing said about our souls.  Perhaps God doesn’t have to work in pairs.  Perhaps we were meant to stand alone.”

Mrs. Phillips’s thin hands were playing nervously with the bed clothes.  There still seemed something that she had to say.  As if Joan hadn’t thought of everything.  Her eyes were fixed upon the narrow strip of light between the window curtains.

“You don’t think you could, dear,” she whispered, “if I didn’t do anything wicked any more.  But just let things take their course.”

“You see, dear,” she went on, her face still turned away, “I thought it all finished.  It will be hard for me to go back to him, knowing as I do now that he doesn’t want me.  I shall always feel that I am in his way.  And Hilda,” she added after a pause, “she will hate me.”

Joan looked at the white patient face and was silent.  What would be the use of senseless contradiction.  The woman knew.  It would only seem an added stab of mockery.  She knelt beside the bed, and took the thin hands in hers.

“I think God must want you very badly,” she said, “or He wouldn’t have laid so heavy a cross upon you.  You will come?”

The woman did not answer in words.  The big tears were rolling down her cheeks.  There was no paint to mingle with and mar them.  She drew the little metal box from under the pillow and gave it into Joan’s hands.

Joan crept out softly from the room.

The nurse was standing by the window.  She turned sharply on Joan’s entrance.  Joan slipped the box into her hands.

The nurse raised the lid.  “What a fool I’ve been,” she said.  “I never thought of that.”

She held out a large strong hand and gave Joan a longish grip.  “You’re right,” she said, “we must get her out of this house at once.  Forgive me.”

Phillips had been called up north and wired that he would not be able to get down till the Wednesday evening.  Joan met him at the station.