Archie's letters came with faithful regularity, but he was one of the personalities who do not carry well by letter. He informed her that he missed her, but she was not to hurry home on his account; that Ellen was keeping down the grocer-bill nicely; that the new man he had put on the road wasn't doing well and he thought of putting Johnny Carmichael in his place; that one of the water-pipes had burst and made a spot on the wall, but nothing to fret about; and that if she needed more money be sure to let him know. Or words to that effect. Archie, somehow, was never quite in the picture. She was better able to reconstruct her lost girlhood without him. And Archie understood. It was he who had suggested the Convent when Joan's doctor admitted himself dissatisfied with her condition, her slow return to normality. "You've got a peculiarly sensitive nervous organism to deal with here," the doctor said. "It takes very little to throw such natures off the balance. You say she never speaks of her babies at all? I don't like that! I'd rather have her crying about all over the place." "So would I," said poor Archie. "Then she'd cry on me, and I could comfort her. Now I don't dare!" "I wouldn't," advised the doctor, frankly. "Better let her alone." So Archie, out of the wisdom of his love, wrote secretly to the nuns and asked them to invite her to the Convent for awhile; and because of the tragedy involved, the good ladies waived their rule of never permitting married women to live in the community. They welcomed her casually, as if her coming were no strange thing, gave her work to do, made her useful running errands and taking the smaller girls about; for in a religious community no one is ever idle. And Joan proved Archie's wisdom by gradually losing her tenseness, her frantic clutching at amusement, and growing daily in strength and poise until at last she was able to enjoy again solitude and thought, two things of which she had for some time been afraid. Indeed, Archie's experiment was almost too successful; for the simple, orderly routine of the Convent was so soothing to her that she dreaded the idea of leaving it. Days slipped into weeks; and still she postponed the thought of going back to her empty house, to Effie May's uncontrolled mourning, to that nursery which had been so happily prepared for the little occupants who never occupied it. She was frightened sometimes to realize how utterly she seemed able to forget her husband when he was not with her. If Archie was rather frightened, too, he never admitted it, even to himself. After all, Joan was his wife; and in his simple creed wives were bound to love their husbands, else how could they remain wives? "She's had an awful shock," he reminded Ellen, who was growing restive. "We've got to give her plenty of time to get over it."