“Seems like man isn’t ready for the beauty of this world.” Then she said quite calmly, as if she had been ready for a long time, “You can drive a car, can’t you? Yes, of course”—and she smiled—“you arrived here in a car. Well, Joel, it would be a real help if you could drive me and Nick in the truck to the state hospital.”

“When?” It was in Joel’s mind that he was expected up at the Ark for supper.

“Soon as we have a bite to eat.”

She went out to the pantry and brought in the remains of a stew and put it on the stove.

“It takes only a little over an hour. You won’t be late up at the Ark.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Now I’ll go and have a talk with Nick. You sit there and calm down.” She had noticed that Joel’s hand was trembling so much he found it hard to get the cup of coffee to his mouth. At the door she turned round and said quietly, “I’ve known this would happen for a long time. Now it has. Now I don’t have to be so anxious any longer. It’s a relief.”

“They’ll help him?”

“Keep him out of mischief.” She shrugged. “Who knows?”

If Joel had expected Ellen to weep or react as some women would to tragedy, he still had much to learn about her. The only way she showed the effect of shock was that she moved slowly and with more dignity than usual about the tasks of the moment.

When she came down again after a half hour, she set a packed suitcase in the hall ready to go. Then she phoned Christina, suggested that she get hold of one of the Lovelands to do the chores Nick had been doing. “Glad you won’t have snow to worry about anyway,” she said. “Joel is expecting to come up tonight. He’ll see to the wood.”

“Don’t forget the wood, will you, Joel?” she said when she came back to lay the table. “Olivia will be coming today. They’ll want fires in the downstairs rooms. I feel bad letting Christina down this way.”

“It’s you,” Joel said, “I wish I could do something.”

“Trouble’s no stranger,” Ellen said, with that characteristic lift of her chin. “It’s one thing I can handle, I guess.”

“Mrs. Chapman too, from what Cathy says … about her son.”

“Yes—John.” Ellen paused a moment, considering this. “Only difference is John tries to kill himself. Nick tries to kill other people. But it all comes from the same root maybe. Not being able to take things as they are.”

“Sometimes I think what my generation wants is to make a world where people like John and Nick could live and not despair,” Joel said passionately. “There’s something awfully wrong.”