While John Barren determined that a space of time extending over some days should now separate him from Joan, she, for her part, had scarce left Gorse Point after the conversation just chronicled when there came a great longing in her heart to return thither. As she walked home she viewed wearily the hours which lay between her and the following morning when she might go back to him and see his face again. Time promised to drag for the next day and night. Already she framed in her mind the things her mouth should say to-morrow; and that almost before she was beyond sight of the man's easel. Her fears had vanished with her tears. The future was entirely in his hand now, for she had accepted his teaching, endeavored to look at life with his eyes, made his God her own, so far as she had wit to gather what his God was. She accepted the situation with trust, and felt responsibility shifted on to "Mister Jan's" shoulders with infinite relief. He was very wise and knew everything and loved the truth. It is desirable to harp and harp upon this ever-recurring thought: the artist's grand love for truth; because all channels of Joan's mind flowed into this lake. His sincerity begat absolute trust. And, as John Barren and his words and thoughts filled the foreground of life for her, so, correspondingly, did the affairs of her home, with all the circumstances of existence in the old environment, peak and dwindle toward shadowy insignificance. Her father lost his majestic proportions; the Luke Gospelers became mere objects for compassion; the petty, temporal interests and concerns of the passing hour appeared mere worthless affairs for the occupation and waste of time. "Mister Jan" loved her, and she loved him, and what else mattered? Past hours of unrest and wakefulness were forgotten; her tears washed the dead anxieties clean away; and the kiss which had caused them, though it scorched her lip when it fell there, was now set as a seal and a crowning glory to her life. He never kissed any other woman. That pledge of this rare man's affection had been won by the magic of love, and Joan welcomed Nature gladly and called it God with a warm heart and thankful soul; for Nature had brought about this miracle. Her former religion worked no wonders; it had only conveyed terror to her and a comprehensive knowledge of hell. "Mister Jan" smiled at hell and she could laugh at her old fears. How was it possible to hesitate between two such creeds? She did not do so, and, with final acceptation of the new, and secret rejection of the old, came a great peace to Joan's heart with the whisper of many voices telling her that she had done rightly.

So the storm gave place to periods of delicious calm and content only clouded by a longing to be back with the artist again. He loved her; the voice of his love was the song of the spring weather, and the thrush echoed it and the early flowers wrote it on the hedgerows. God was everywhere to her open eyes. Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good, seemed to have been created for her delight during that homeward walk. She was mightily lifted up. Nature seemed so strong, so kind, such a guardian angel for a maiden. And the birds sang out that "Mister Jan" was Nature's priest and could do no wrong; and that to obey Nature was the highest good.

From which reflection rose a hazy happiness—dim, beautiful and indefinable as the twinkling gold upon the sea under the throne of the sun. Joan dwelt on the memory of the day which was now over for her, and on the thought of morning hours which to-morrow would bring. But she looked no further; and backward she did not gaze at all. No thought of Joe Noy dimmed her mental delight; no shadowy cloud darkened the horizon then. All was bright, all perfect. Her mind seemed to be breaking its little case, as the butterfly bursts the chrysalis. Her life till then had been mere grub existence; now she could fly and had seen the sun drawing the scent from flowers. Great ideas filled her soul; new emotions awoke; she was like a baby trying to utter the thing he has no word for; her vocabulary broke down under the strain, and as she walked she gave thanks to Nature in a mere wordless song, like the lark, because she could not put her acknowledgment into language. But the great Mother, to whom Life is all in all, the living individual nothing, looked on at a world wakening from sleep and viewed the loves of the flowers and the loves of the birds and beasts and fishes with concern as keen as the love in the blue eyes of Joan upon her homeward way.

Busy indeed at this vernal season was the mysterious Nurse of God's little world. Her hands rested not from her labors. She worked strange wonders on the waste, by magic of a million breaking buds, by burying of the dead, by wafting of subtle pollen-life from blossom to blossom. And in cliffs above the green waters the nests of her wild-fowl were already lined with wool and feather; neither were her samphires forgotten in their dizzy habitations; and salt spray sprinkled her uncurling sea ferns in caves and crannies where they grew. She laughed at the porpoises rolling their fat sides into sunshine; she brought the sea-otter where it should find fish for its young; she led giant congers to drowned men; she patted the sleek head of the sad-eyed seal. Elsewhere she showed the father-hawk a leveret crouching in his form; she took young rabbits to the new spring grass; the fox to the fowl, the fly to the spider, the blight to the bud. Her weakly nestlings fell from tree and cliff to die, but she beheld unmoved; her weasel sucked the gray-bird's egg, yet no hand was raised against the thief, no voice comforted the screaming agony of the mother. With the van of her legions she moved, and the suffering stragglers cried in vain, for her concerns were not with them. She did no right, she worked no evil; she was not cruel, neither shall we call her kind. The servant of God was she, then as always, heedful of His utterances, obedient to His laws. Which laws, when man better divines, he shall learn thy secret too, Nurse of the world, but not sooner.