She was still young enough to will that past events had not occurred, and that things true were false.
"I didn't take her," replied Stella Croyle.

"I wouldn't take her.

I knew baby--besides she had struck me too hard." "You came away alone!" whispered Joan.
"In the cab which I had kept waiting at the door to take us both away." "That's terrible!" said Joan.

The child with her lovely face set like flint in the room, the mother creeping out of the house and stumbling alone into the fly at the door--the picture was vivid before her eyes.
Joan wrung her hands with a little helpless gesture, and a moan upon her lips.

Almost it seemed that these sad things were actually happening to _her_; so poignantly she felt them.
"Oh, and you had all that long journey back to London, the journey you had dreamt of for eleven months with your baby at your side--you had now to take it alone." Stella Croyle shook her head.
"No! There was just one and only one of my friends--and not at all a great friend--who had the imagination to understand, as you understand too, Joan, just what that journey would have meant to me, if anything had gone wrong, and the kindness to put himself out to make its endurance a little easier." Joan drew back quickly.
"Harry Luttrell," she whispered.
"Yes.