Immediately after their mother’s death the two, as was natural, saw still more of each other. Joanna was still able – spasmodically at least – to believe that her world was shaken by the ordinary course of bereavement. Her mother, she told herself, had stood, more than could have been guessed, for the external seemliness and the underlying coherence of things. And now that her mother was gone, these were challenged. But here was Georgie, herself soon to be a mother. Here was Georgie, eloquent and beaming – a very embodiment, if ever there was one, of the affirmation that all was solidly established as before. In Georgie’s company Joanna was able to regard her own deathly knowledge as mere, sickly, grieving fancies. And this was what she frantically sought.

Then in October the baby boy, the treasure of treasures, arrived. And amid that wonder and rejoicing and piercing wistfulness of envy Joanna thought she perceived the way by which she might save herself.

Though it came to her apparently as a revealing flash from without, she had no sooner measured its importance than she knew it had lain hid in her heart for years past. Why else had she drawn such peculiar comfort from the presence of Ollie and Roddy in Chapel Court? Why had the tending of their bodies so deeply stirred her own flesh? Why now did the handling of this small, red bundle in Georgie’s firstborn send so strange a quivering up her arms to her heart, and from her heart back along her limbs to the very hollows of her feet?

The answer, she thought, was clear. If only she might bear Louis a child!

Far from raising new problems in Joanna’s confused and tortured life this idea offered her a well-nigh perfect solution. Not only did it promise an enforced consummation of her love for Louis, but the very material difficulties, which might have appeared as obstacles to another woman, were to her so many spurs urging her on. They attracted because they seemed to show the direction in which effort would be worth while. As for the immediate conventional bearings of the situation she had no fears. Her mother was dead, her brothers away, Georgie married and happy. And just because she was herself ready for all risks, she knew she could be prudent. Within the first hour in which she saw herself as a mother, a complete programme of action arranged itself in her mind. She would go, she told herself, to Aunt Perdy’s mountain top to have her child. If Louis chose to cleave to her it would be salvation for him as well. If he dared not, she would let him go. There would be no alternative. Besides, with a girl-babe like Little Ollie or a man-child like Roddy sprung from their love, she would have her place in that world which now was slipping from beneath her feet.