It was Judith who had wrought this last, greatest miracle of all. It was Judith who had made their friendship what it was. Somehow, from the first, she seemed to have been able to shut out, or, at the worst, to ward off, from their intimacy, all dangerous provocations. It was as if she had drawn a white line round herself, even in her thoughts, past which neither he, nor she, could enter. Uncle Bond, most wise and tactful of hosts, had helped. And the Imps, Judith's boys, had helped too. Somehow, Judith and the Imps, Button, so called because of his button mouth, and Bill, cherubic and chubby, had always been inseparably associated in his mind. Almost from the first, he must have known that Judith, young as she was, was a widow. But it was only lately that he had learnt that her husband had been a sailor like himself, a sailor who had served with distinction, and lost his life, in the Pacific War, the war which he had missed himself, to his own everlasting regret, by a few bare weeks of juniority-- By this time, the throbbing car was sweeping down the opening stretch of the Great North Road, out into the real country. More as a matter of custom, than of conscious thought, the King slowed down the car. It had become his habit on these occasions, that he should slacken his speed, when he had at last successfully escaped from the town, so that he could attune his mind to his surroundings, and savour to the full his eager anticipation of Judith's joyous welcome. Suddenly, the ghostly, white painted figure of a signpost, for which he always kept an eye open, flashed into his view, on the left of the road. Once, on a winter evening of fog-thickened darkness, when he had been driving out to see Judith, as he was driving now, the King had grown uncertain of his route. Coming to this signpost, he had been glad to halt, to verify his position. Clambering up the post, with the ready agility of the sailor, he had struck a match, to discover that the signpost had been used, by some unknown humorist, to perpetrate a jest, with which he had found himself in instant, serious, and wholehearted sympathy. The ordinary place names had been obliterated on the signpost fingers. In lieu of them had been painted, in rude, black letters, on the finger pointing to London, "To Hades," and, on the opposite finger, pointing north, out into the open country, "To Paradise." The King headed the car now "To Paradise," with an uplifting of the heart, which never failed him, on this portion of the road. A little later, he became aware that he was passing the site of his former breakdown, the breakdown which had first led him, a year ago, to Judith. He knew then that he had run out of Middlesex into Hertfordshire.