As she leant, gazing out of the window down the black line of water that lost itself in the silent gathering of the houses, there almost was triumph in her mind. She had lost everything, but she had done everything. She was utterly alone; but only because she had outlived her world. And last of all, there was triumph in her heart, because her world was complete. She could have asked nothing more of it. Her Romance was rekindled. If there was anything to live for, it was to see the flames leaping up in some other brazier--those flames which she had given the spark of her life to ignite. And had she not seen them rising already? Had she not seen the fire blessed by the only hand to whom the power of blessing is given? For all she knew, for all she dared to guess, the old gentleman’s blessing had fallen upon a future, further distant than, perhaps, he dreamed of. What more had desire to ask for than that? She remembered how, in those days of doubt and troubling, she had counted in fear the time which was left in which John should take his wife. She remembered doubting that they might even live to see the realisation of such happiness as that. They were old people. There had no longer been certainty for them in the counting of the years. And, as this very day had proved, John’s marriage had come none too soon. Had it been later, had they not received that blessing to which, with all such things as the flights of magpies and the turnings of the moon, this simple soul of hers gave magic virtue, then, indeed, she might have looked sorrowfully out of the high window in the great room. But no--there had been no such mischance as that. The vivid sense of completeness filled her heart and raised the beating of it for a few moments, as the hope of a dying priest is raised by the presentation of his beloved cross. And this is the philosophy, the stoicism of women, who will face the fearsome emptiness of a whole desert of life, so be it, that their heart is full and satisfied.