The notion of herself as an entity, surviving, growing, separate and alone, filled her for the first time with a curious excitement. It released so many fresh and irresistible currents within her. She began to think more consciously of other men, of Potter Osprey in particular. She rose and went out into the orchard. The painter had had constructed a table and seats for them earlier in the summer, and she sat down in one of the gaily painted stationary benches which gave the children so much pleasure. They recalled to her his scores of other attentions; the flowers and delicacies of one sort or another which he had sent down regularly by Nana, his numerous subterfuges to help her with money, the little comforts that he had added to the house, his presents to young Miles and Joanna. These things, of which her husband--most younger men indeed--would never have thought, were dear to her. And once he had hinted, in a joking manner, of “leaving her the cottage” in his will. “You can’t tell--I may be knocked off some day,” he had said. “I’ve become such an absentminded countryman that I’m always a little surprised to find myself alive after crossing a New York street.” She had turned such overtures off with pleasantries, which they deserved, and yet she had entertained them; they had wooed her and become a part of her dilatory dreaming. As she sat there in the caressingly cool night she felt this keenly; she felt a sense of permanency and peace under the protecting boughs of the orchard. She could not remember such a feeling since long ago at Thornhill. She rose reluctantly and went into the house. Unquestionably she had reached a point where she could regard Osprey’s passion without disturbance; and yet she longed for a temporary refuge from it, knowing that at any moment they might be brought together by some turn of the conversation such as that to-night and his reserve would give way. She wanted to escape that contingency for a long time, to think out her relationship to the future. But she had no reasonable means or excuse to flee. Her plans had not been made for the winter, and according to their informal agreement she was to remain in the cottage another month. Robert Blaydon’s visit furnished a safe diversion for three days. She was able to keep him that long through the insistent hospitality of Osprey, and the fact that the two took a strong liking to each other. They sat up late together in the studio one night over a fine brand of Scotch whisky which Blaydon had brought with him, and the younger man submitted amiably to a questioning about Moira which disclosed little more than that he had been her boyhood companion at one time, and her circumstances had once been opulent. He told Osprey, however, that he had heard his own name often. “Yes?” inquired his host. “Well, perhaps that’s natural, as you say we have been fellow townsmen.”