She cast her mind back over her married life. Six years in September since she and Ern had ridden back to Old Town in Isaac Woolgar's cart. Six years of struggle, worry, and deep joy. She was thankful for them, thankful for the crowding babes, and most of all, she sometimes thought, thankful for Ernie ... His unfailing love and solicitude for little Alice! She could never be grateful enough to him for that. Dear Ern:--so affectionate, so always loveable. She regretted nothing, not even his weakness now. Because of his weakness strength had come to her, growth, and the consummation of deep unconscious desire. Had she been too hard on him?--A great voice of comfort, the voice of Ernie, so it seemed to her, only swollen to gigantic proportions, till the sound of it was like the sound of the Sou-West wind billowing through the beach-tops in Paradise, surged up within her crying No. Then she turned back to the first volume of her life, completed now so many years ago. For the second time she had been left thus, man-less, a new life quickening within her. But what a difference between then and now! Then the fierce thief of her virginity had stolen away in the night, leaving her to meet the consequences, alone, an outcast, the hand of all men against her; and she recalled now with a shudder the afternoon on which she had gone forth to the Crumbles and there amid the jeers of the remorseless sea had faced the situation. Now it was true her accustomed mate had been snatched from her side; but the world was behind her. She was marching with the hosts, a mighty concourse, one of them, and uplifted on their songs. She had nothing to fear, much to be thankful for. How calm she felt, how strong, how confident of herself, above all of Ernie! His punishment had made him and completed her own life. She had won her man and in winning him had won herself. And she would never lose him now. His pain, her pain, had been worth while. Smiles were in her eyes as she recalled the fuss that he had made--his struggles, his temper, his wiles of a naughty and thwarted child; and tears where she recalled the anguish of his time of purgation. And yet because of his suffering he had been strong when the day of battle came, and he would be strong. She had no doubt of that. And it was all over now.