“I think that’s why I love it,” she said: “for it’s dear, old-fashioned ways. We will teach it the new dreams, too. It will be so shocked, at first.” They travelled leisurely through Holland and the Rhine land, and that helped a little: the new scenes and interests; and in Switzerland they discovered a delightful little village in an upland valley with just one small hotel, and decided to stay there for a while, so as to give themselves time to get their letters. They took long walks and climbs, returning tired and hungry, looking forward to their dinner and the evening talk with the few other guests on the veranda. The days passed restfully in that hidden valley. The great white mountains closed her in. They seemed so strong and clean.!

She would make him put his arms around her. They watched the loading of a steamer while Joan drank her tea.

For her father’s sake, she made pretence of eagerness, but as the sea widened between her and the harbour lights it seemed as if a part of herself were being torn away from her. After the war was over and the men, released from their long terms of solitary confinement, came back to life injured in mind and body, she was almost glad he had escaped. But at the time it filled her soul with darkness. “You didn’t know him, dear,” she had said to Joan. “All his faults were on the outside.”