It was not until the Radways had disappeared and Roscarna began to recoil into its old routine of life, that Gabrielle collapsed. The blow to her imagination had been heavier than anyone dreamed, so staggering, in its first impact, that for a time she had been numbed. In a week or two, with returning consciousness, her sufferings began to be felt. She could not sleep at night, and when she did sleep she dreamed perpetually of one thing, the endless, precarious descent of a slippery mountain-side in the company of Radway. The dream always ended in the same way, with a fall, a laugh, a shattering report, and a flash of light which meant that she was awake. In her disordered eyes the woods of Roscarna, the river, and the lake took on a melancholy tinge. Though this aspect of them was new to her, it is hardly strange that she should have seen them thus, for the beauty of Roscarna is really of an elegiac kind, an autumnal beauty of desertion and of decay. As for Slieveannilaun, she dared not look at it. Jocelyn tried hard to cheer her up. With an effort he whipped up enough energy to take her out with his dogs and his gun, until her look of horror made him suspect that the sound of a gunshot was a nightmare to her, as indeed it was, reminding her of many dreams and one unforgettable reality. She did her best to hide this from him, for she saw that he was really trying to be kind. Considine also tried to interest her in new things and to distract her mind. His methods were tactful. He knew perfectly well that the official manner of condolence that had gone down so well with the Radways wouldn't do for her. He just treated her as the child that he knew her to be, trying to induce her to join in a game of pretending that nothing had happened. Gabrielle realised his humane attempt from the first and even, for a time, tried to play up to him, but the affair ended disastrously in a flood of bitter, uncontrollable tears for which neither the parson nor the man could offer any remedy. It seemed to him that this was a woman's job, and so he and Jocelyn met in solemn consultation with Biddy Joyce. At this point an easy solution seemed to offer itself in an invitation from the Halbertons. They had heard all the details of the affair from Radway's people and wrote inviting Gabrielle to stay with them in Devon for a month. The two men prepared the bait most carefully, but when their plan was disclosed to her, Gabrielle rejected it with an unusual degree of passion, imploring them to leave her alone ... only to leave her alone.