Bellair placed her saying to the account of her fine zeal for the good of the nearest. He was very far from seeing anything heroic in his part of the ten days.... They had paused on the little hill back of the settlement where she had lived. With all her coming home, she met no acquaintance while he was with her. It was as if she had come to look, not to enter.... But there were two days in which she went forward alone, and Bellair got a foretaste of what it would mean to be separated. It called to him all the strength that he had earned.... The Faraway Woman came back to Hamilton where he waited--as one who had hastened. The child was asleep, and they walked out into the streets together.... They were alone again as in that first night on board the _Fomalhaut_ when Fleury left them. “Do you want to stay to make your house near the Hamilton road?” he asked. She regarded him quietly, her eyes fixed upon his face with an incommunicable yearning. “No.” “Do you mean to stay in New Zealand?” Again she held him with her eyes, before answering: “It may be well for me here, as anywhere. I could not stay in America.” The sun was setting. It was she who broke the silence: “_You_ must go away?” “Yes. You knew that from _him_?” “From what he said--yes.” “He told me not to stay too long.” “Perhaps he saw it all. Perhaps he saw something that would keep you.” “He saw a very great deal.” They had been gone two hours. Her steps quickened, when she thought of the child.... “Yes, I may as well stay in Auckland,” she said. “Do you know, I should like to stay by the sea--to be near it, for remembering----” That seemed to come very close to Bellair’s conviction--that her whole life was turned to the saint who had passed. “A little house by the sea,” he said, his mind picturing it eagerly to relieve the greater matter. “Just what I was thinking--a little place out of Auckland on the bluffs--overlooking Waitemata--where one could see the ships coming in----” “Will you let me help you find it, and arrange your affairs?” “Nothing could be happier for me--if you would.” “We’ll go back to Auckland to-night, and start out looking from there.” Mainly they followed the shore during their days of search; but sometimes they found woods and little towns. There was no coming to the end of her; she put on fresh perfections every day, and there were moments in which he was meshed in his own stupidity for not seeing the splendour of her at the first moment. He became possessed of a healthful wonder about women--how men like himself wait for years for some companion-soul, finally believing her to be in the sky, only to find that _the nearest_ was waiting all the time. The world is so full of illusions, and a man’s mind is darkest when it seems most clear.