“It’s all so soft, and pretty, and old,” she said. “I feel as if Staple must always have been here--just where it is, looking across to the Moor, and nodding sometimes, as much as to say, ‘I’ve been here so long that I know some of your secrets.’ The Moor always seems to me to have secrets,” she added dreamily. “Those great tors watch us all the time, just as they’ve watched for centuries. They remind me of the Egyptian Sphinx, they are so still, and silent, and--and eternal-looking.” “You’ve not been on to Dartmoor yet, have you?” asked Judith. “We have a bungalow up there--Three Fir Bungalow, it’s called. You must come and spend a few days there with us when the weather gets warmer.” “I should love it,” cried Jean, her eyes sparkling. “I’m aching to go to the Moor. I want to see it in all sorts of moods--when it’s raining, and when the sun’s shining, and when the wind blows. I’m sure it will be different each time--rather like a woman.” “I think it’s loveliest of all by moonlight,” said Judith, her eyes soft and shining with recollection. She loved all the beauty of the world as much as Jean herself did. “I remember being on the top of one of the tors at night. All the surrounding valleys were hidden in a mist like a silver sea, and I felt as if I had got right away from the everyday world, into a sort of holy of holies that God must have made for His spirits. One almost forgot that one was just an ordinary, plain-boiled human being tied up in a parcel of flesh and bone.” “Only people aren’t really in the least plain-boiled or ordinary,” observed Jean quaintly. “You aren’t, I verily believe.” Judith regarded her curiously for a moment. “I think I wish you were,” she said abruptly. She was not finding the part assigned to her by her brother any too easy. It complicates matters, when you are deliberately planning a semblance of friendship towards someone, if that someone persists in inspiring you with little genuine impulses of liking and friendliness. Jean herself was delighted with the result of her visit to Willow Perry. She was convinced that Judith was a much nicer woman than she had imagined, or than anyone else imagined her to be, and when she took her departure she carried these warmer sentiments with her, characteristically reproaching herself not a little for her first hasty judgment. People improved upon acquaintance enormously, she reflected. She did not go straight back to Staple, but took her way towards Charnwood on the chance of finding Claire at home, and, Fate being in a benevolent mood, she discovered her in her garden, precariously mounted upon a ladder and occupied in nailing back a creeper. Claire greeted her joyfully and proceeded to descend. “I’ve been lunching at Willow Perry,” explained Jean, “so I thought I might as well come on here and cadge my tea as well!” “Of course you might Adrian has gone into Exeter to-day, so we shall be alone.”