"Well, does it make any difference?" Joan asked.

"You bet it does! It makes me free to stay in town."

"I'm afraid you'll wilt," Joan twinkled.

"We must take precautions against that." Raymond looked deadly in earnest.

The meetings of these two were now set, like clear jewels in the round of common days. They were not too frequent and they were always managed like chance happenings. Always there was a sense of surprise, a thrill of unbelievable good luck attending them; but there was, also, a growing sense of a.s.surance and understanding.

"I wonder," Joan said once, pressing hard against the shield that protected them, "I wonder if you and I would have played so delightfully had we been--well--introduced! Miss Jones and Mr. Black."

"No!" Raymond burst in positively. "Miss Jones would have been enveloped in the things expected of Miss Jones, and Mr. Black would have been kept busy--keeping off the gra.s.s!"

"Aren't you ever afraid," Joan mused on, "that some day we'll suddenly come across each other when our shields are left behind in--in the secret tower?"

"I try not to think of it," Raymond leaned toward the girl; "but if we did we'd know each other a lot better than most girls and fellows are ever allowed to know each other," he said.

"Do you think so?" Joan looked wistfully at him. "You see this isn't real; it's play, and I'm afraid Miss Jones and Mr. Black would be awfully suspicious of each other--just on account of the play."

"And so--we'll make sure that shields are always in commission," Raymond rea.s.sured her. "In this small world of ours we cannot run any risks with Miss Jones and Mr. Black. They have no part here."

"No, they haven't!" Joan leaned back. That subtle weakness was touching her; the aftermath of strained imagination. She was often homesick for Doris and Nancy--she was getting afraid that she might not be able to find her way back to them when the time came to go.

"Poor little girl!" Raymond was saying over the table, and his words fitted into the tune the fountain sang--it was the same tune the fountain sang in the sunken room of long ago; all fountains, Joan had grown to think, sang the same lovely, drippy song.

"I wonder just how brave and free a little girl it is?"

Joan screwed up her lips.

"Limitless," she whispered, daringly.

"You're played out, child!" Raymond went on; "there are blue shadows under your eyes. I wish you'd let me do something for you."

"You are doing something," the words came slowly, caressingly; "you're making a hard time very beautiful; you're making me believe--in--in fairies, or what stands for fairies, nowadays; you're making me trust myself and for ever after when--when I slip back where I belong--I'm going to remember, and be--so glad! You see, I know, now, that in the world of grown-ups you _can_ make things come true."

"Where you belong?" Raymond gripped his hands close. "Just where do you belong? _Are_ you Miss Jones or are you the sweet nameless thing that I am looking at?"

"Oh! I'm Miss Jones!" Joan sat up promptly, "and I'm going to make sure that Miss Jones doesn't get hurt while I play with her."

And as she spoke Joan was thinking of the ugly interpretation of this beautiful play which Patricia would give. Patricia couldn't make things come true because she never tried hard enough.

"I wonder"--and the fountain made Joan dizzy as she listened to Raymond--"I wonder, now since I'm to stay in town, if you'd let me bring my car in? We'd have some great old rides. We'd cool off and have picnics by roadsides and--and get the best of this blasted heat."

"I think it would be heavenly!" Joan saw, already, cool woods and felt the refreshing air on her face.

Raymond was taken aback. He had expected protest.

But the car materialized and so did the picnics and the cool breezes on young, unafraid faces.

At each new venture rea.s.surance waxed stronger--things could be made true in the world; it was only children who failed, in spite of tradition.

Just at this time Sylvia came to town radiating success and happiness.

The result was disastrous. There are times when one cannot endure the prosperity of his friends! Had Sylvia come back with her banners trailing, Joan and Patricia would have rallied to her standard, but she was cool, crisp, and her eyes were fixed upon a successful future.

She was going to do, not only the frieze, but a dozen other things.

People whom she had met had been impressed. Things were coming her way with a vengeance. One order was in the Far West--a glorified cabin in a canyon.

"I'm to do all the interior decorating," Sylvia bubbled; "a little out of my line, but they feel I can do it. And"--here the girl looked blissful--"it will be near enough for my John to come and take a vacation."

Patricia and Joan, at that moment, knew the resentment of the unattached woman for the protected one. Sylvia appeared the child of the G.o.ds while they were merely permitted to sit at the gates and envy her triumphs.

"I suppose," Patricia burst in, "that this means the end?"

"End?" Sylvia looked puzzled.

"Yes. Plain John will gobble you, Art and all. But your duties here----"

Patricia with a tragic gesture pointed to Joan. "What of Miss Lamb, not to mention me?"

Sylvia looked serious.

"Joan is to study music next winter," she said; "haven't you told Pat, Joan?"

Joan shook her head. She had almost forgotten it herself.

"And live with her people," Sylvia went on and then, noticing Patricia's pale little face, she burst forth:

"Pat, take that offer from Chicago that you've been thinking about! It's a big thing--designing for that firm. It will make you independent, leave you time to scribble, and give you a change. Pat, do be sensible."

Patricia drew herself up. She felt that she was being disposed of simply to get her out of the way. She resented it and she was hurt.

"I do not have to decide just now," she said, coldly; "and don't fuss about me, Syl. Now that you and Joan are provided for I can jog along at my own free will, and no one will have to pay but me!"

"Pat!" Joan broke in, "you and I will stick together. And it's all right about Syl. What is this one life for, anyway, if it does not leave us free? Syl, marry your John--your art won't suffer! Pat, where I go you go next winter."

But Patricia lighted a cigarette, and while the smoke issued from her pretty little nose she sighed.

What happened was this: Patricia shopped and sewed for Sylvia and made her radiantly ready for her trip West. And Joan, feeling the break final, although she did not admit it, forsook her own pleasures while she helped Patricia and clung to Sylvia.

"Pat has sublet her rooms," she confided to Sylvia one day, "and is coming here until our lease is up; so you are foot-loose, my precious Syl, and G.o.d bless you!"

In August Sylvia departed and Joan and Patricia set up housekeeping together. But at the end of the first week, and the beginning of a new hot spell, Joan found a note on her pillow one night when she came in, exhausted:

Had to get cool somewhere. I'm not responsible for losing my breath. Take care of yourself.

"This seems the last straw!" sobbed Joan, for Raymond had told her that day at the Brier Bush that important business was taking him out of town.

"He has to catch his breath," poor Joan cried, miserably, quite as if her own background was eliminated; "but what of my breath? And to-day is Sat.u.r.day, and----" The bleak emptiness of a hot Sunday in the stifling studio stretched ahead wretchedly, like a parched desert.