“If you would like to pray with William and me, the children are asleep. And Martha has gone to her bed. We would be quite undisturbed.”

“I know you would like it,” he said.

“You should not do it for me, John.”

“But you would love me better if I learned to say my prayers again.”

“No,” she said, “that would be a poor sort of love. But you might be happier. Or you would find again a quietness you may have lost. Prayer is balm for troubled hearts. I know this.”

“You have had your own troubles,” he said.

“I have had some.”

“And you are uncomplaining.”

“If I am it is because I do not have to bear them alone.”

“You have William.”

“Yes. William, of course. But I mean He that is greater than any mortal man.”

“I know you do.”

“Alone we can do nothing.”

“Faith is a gift,” he said.

“It is a gift we can choose, John. Our Saviour does not care how we come to Him, only that we do. We are His children. He wants only that we should lay our hand in His. And when we do He cares for us like a father.”

Lacroix nodded. “One trick,” he said, “the Spanish irregulars liked to perform when they caught a Frenchman out on his own was to crucify him upside down on a barn door. Then they would build a little fire under his head.”

She said nothing. He apologised. It was not even a thing he had seen. He had heard of it but not seen it. It might not even have been true.

“You are going away to forget such things,” she said.

“I am going away,” he answered. “That much I know.”

“I can see the sense of it now, John. I can see it is what you need. I should have known better than to speak to you like this.”

“Dear Lucy, if you will not speak to me openly I cannot think who will.”

“A wife perhaps.”

“A what?”

“A wife.”

“I somehow doubt,” he said, “there will be many marriageable young women on the Jenny.”

She nodded, smiled at him, the smile resigned and grave. “I will put a lamp in our window,” she said. “The room we played in with the children. I will put a lamp there, and each night until you are back I will light it for you.”

Though he would have preferred to sleep on for hours—had not arrived at sleep at all until three or four in the morning—he rose at six and breakfasted with Lucy and the twins. William was already at work and when Lacroix had finished his coffee he went up to see him.