With broken ways behind them, new roads in front of them as yet untried, they seemed thus to be waiting a little, putting fragments together, finding, as it were, their foothold, or perhaps seeking it, as yet blindly. Prudence Varley's optimism would doubtless have averred that the finding was only a matter of time. The Crevequers averred nothing; it was not in them to analyse, as Prudence analysed and thought out. But deep in their pondering eyes lay unsolved questions--questions they did not consciously put to themselves; questions as to the happy road they so blindly sought--whether it ran through new places or through old; whether, if through new, it could be reached, seeing that temperament, which had at least as much moulded circumstance as circumstance had forced temperament, was probably in the end master of all the roads, insisting that every one remained, as Betty had said, pretty much the same sort of person as he began. If one was so to remain, it would perhaps be wiser to seek no more. For the basis of these new desires was, after all, so irremediably shattered. What the Crevequers did not know was whether the desires had any independent standing. For they would never be self-tormentors; they would seek always, and have a considerable gift for finding, the happiest way; they understood, as Prudence had said, the art of living well enough for that. But where that quest would lead them it was not given to them, not given to anyone, to know. So, among all the confusion and the chaos of things broken and problems unsolved, two facts alone stood out, stable and unquestioned, inevitably sure. One was the complete breakage of the basis of their new desires--its scattering into fragments, never, whatever else might come to pass, to be pieced together. That destruction they had accepted; it was too inevitable for rebellion. They had left that behind them; and time would heal the memory, as time heals all hurts. The other thing that emerged unquestionably out of the chaos was how they were together; how they had been together through everything; how they were together now, sailing pine-bark boats and seeking fresh roads; how, along any roads they might chance to find, they would journey together, knowing themselves admirable travelling-companions, knowing that to be well amused on the road is three-parts of the journey's hope. As Betty had said, 'We can help each other, and no one else in the world can help us. Because we know each other so awfully well. Don't you see?' Prudence had seen--seen, too, that it was the best thing they had--the thing that would in the end matter, however much everything else failed. She had seen the Crevequers cast up, as it were, out of fire, holding this gold to them, when all else--the old and the new things alike--had melted from their hands.