Tanqueray was right. She was not to be trusted on the open moors. She was out of doors all day. And out of doors the Idea that had driven her forth withdrew itself. Its very skirts, only half-discerned, were beyond her grasp. She was oppressed at times by a sense of utter frustration and futility. If this was all; if she was simply there enjoying herself, tramping the hills all day, a glorious animal set free; if she was not going to accomplish anything, then she had no business to be there at all. It would be better to give it up, to give in, to go back again. There was a day in her third week when she nearly did go back, when it seemed to her that she would be obeying a wise instinct if she went. She got as far as looking up the trains to Waterloo. Then, on the brink of it, something that announced itself as a wiser and profounder instinct, an instinct of self-preservation, told her not to go. It told her to wait, to trust to Nature's way, and to Nature's wisdom in bringing back her youth. Nature's way was to weave over again the web of life so strained and worn, so tangled and broken by the impact of other lives. Nature's wisdom was to make her simple and strong, a new creature, with a clean vision and an imagination once more virgin to the world. In short, Nature's beneficent intention was to restore her whole to the genius which also had been a part of Nature's plan. And all the time good news of Brodrick and the children reached her every other day. Punctually, every other day Gertrude Collett wrote, assuring her that all was going well at home and urging her to stay. Brodrick wrote (at rather longer intervals) saying how happy the children were, and how entirely comfortable he was with Gertrude. His letters contained little besides praise of Gertrude. There was no reason, he reiterated, why she should not stay. She stayed, and in her fifth week she received the reward of her staying. Walking back to the farm late one evening, the moors veiled from her passion by the half-darkness, her Idea came back to her. It came, not yet with the vividness of flesh and blood, but like a ghost. It had ghostly hands and feet, and like a ghost it walked the road with her. But through its presence she felt in herself again that nascent ecstasy which foretold, infallibly, the onset of the incredible act and labour of creation. When she reached the farm she found George Tanqueray sitting in the porch. The lamp-light through the open door revealed him. "Whatever brought you here?" she said. "What always brings me." She understood him to mean that he also had been driven forth, and was in subjection to the Idea. "Have you come to turn me out?" she said. "No, Jinny." He explained that he was staying in the village, at the Three Crowns. He had arrived that evening and had walked over. He followed her into the deep kitchen. At the supper-table his place had been laid for him already. He had ordered it so. He looked at her, smiling an apology.