And to this end everything was in her favour.

She needed not to close her eyes to fancy that thirty days had not really passed between then and now, as she left her house in the afternoon with the Wanderer by her side.
He had come back and had found her once more herself, calm, collected, conscious of her own powers.

No suspicion of the real cause of the disturbance he had witnessed crossed his mind, still less could he guess what thing she meditated as she directed their walk towards that lonely place by the river which had been the scene of her first great effort.
She talked lightly as they went, and he, in that strange humour of peaceful, well-satisfied indifference which possessed him, answered her in the same strain.

It was yet barely afternoon, but there was already a foretaste of coming evening in the chilly air.
"I have been thinking of what you said this morning," she said, suddenly changing the current of the conversation.

"Did I thank you for your kindness ?" She smiled as she laid her hand gently upon his arm, to cross a crowded street, and she looked up into his quiet face.
"Thank me?
For what?
On the contrary--I fancied that I had annoyed you." "Perhaps I did not quite understand it all at first," she answered thoughtfully.