“It isn’t in the least because I feel I owe it to Adrian,” she said in answer to Nick’s protest. “I don’t consider that I owe him anything at all. But I feel so battered, Nick, so utterly tired and weary after the perpetual struggle of the last three years that I don’t want to plunge suddenly into the new duties of a new life--not even into new happiness. It’s difficult to make you understand, but I feel just like a sponge which has soaked up all it can and simply can’t absorb any more of _anything_. You must let me have time for the past to evaporate a bit.” But it required the addition of a few common-sense observations on the part of Lady Anne to drive the nail home. “Claire is quite right, Nick,” she told him. “She is temporarily worn out--mentally, physically and spiritually spent. Her nerves have been kept at their utmost stretch off and on for years, and now that release has come they’ve collapsed like a fiddle-string when the peg that holds it taut is loosened. You must give her time to recover, to key herself up to normal pitch again. At present she isn’t fit to face even the demands that big happiness brings in its train.” So Nick had perforce to bow to Claire’s decision, and it was settled that for the first month of two, at least, of her widowhood Jean should remove herself and her belongings from Staple and bear her company at Charnwood. And meanwhile Nick and Claire would spend many peaceful hours together of quiet happiness and companionship, while Claire, as she herself expressed it, “rebuilt her soul.” To Jean the issue of events had brought nothing but pure joy. Her belief had been justified, and the grim gateway of death had become for these two friends of hers the gateway to happiness. She had neither seen nor heard anything from Burke since the day she had fled from him on the Moor, although indirectly she had discovered that he had quitted the bungalow the day following that of her flight from it and had gone to London. Judith sent her a brief, rather formal letter of congratulation upon her engagement, but in it she made no reference to him nor did she endeavour to explain away or palliate her own share in his scheme to force Jean’s hand. Probably an odd kind of loyalty to her brother prevented her from clearing herself at his expense, added to a certain dogged pride which refused to let her extenuate any action of hers; to the daughter of Glyn Peterson. But none of these things had any power to hurt Jean now. In her new-born happiness she felt that she could find it in her heart to forgive anybody anything! She was even conscious of a certain tentative understanding and indulgence for Burke himself. He had only used the “primitive man” methods his temperament dictated in his effort to win the woman he wanted for his wife. And he had failed. Just now, Jean could not help sympathising with anybody who had failed to find the happiness that love bestows.