"So would I," said poor Archie. "Then she'd cry on me, and I could comfort her. Now I don't dare!"
"I wouldn't," advised the doctor, frankly. "Better let her alone."
So Archie, out of the wisdom of his love, wrote secretly to the nuns and asked them to invite her to the Convent for awhile; and because of the tragedy involved, the good ladies waived their rule of never permitting married women to live in the community. They welcomed her casually, as if her coming were no strange thing, gave her work to do, made her useful running errands and taking the smaller girls about; for in a religious community no one is ever idle. And Joan proved Archie's wisdom by gradually losing her tenseness, her frantic clutching at amusement, and growing daily in strength and poise until at last she was able to enjoy again solitude and thought, two things of which she had for some time been afraid.
Indeed, Archie's experiment was almost too successful; for the simple, orderly routine of the Convent was so soothing to her that she dreaded the idea of leaving it. Days slipped into weeks; and still she postponed the thought of going back to her empty house, to Effie May's uncontrolled mourning, to that nursery which had been so happily prepared for the little occupants who never occupied it.
She was frightened sometimes to realize how utterly she seemed able to forget her husband when he was not with her. If Archie was rather frightened, too, he never admitted it, even to himself. After all, Joan was his wife; and in his simple creed wives were bound to love their husbands, else how could they remain wives?
"She's had an awful shock," he reminded Ellen, who was growing restive. "We've got to give her plenty of time to get over it."
"Humph! and what about you? I suppose you ain't had a good deal of a shock yourself?" muttered the old woman, savage with sympathy. "Wasn't you bringing home toys and truck every day of the world, trains and dolls and I don't know what all—and them not a week old yet? Your top chiffoneer drawer's full of toys this minute."
"Better give them away to the children in the neighborhood before she sees them."
"No such thing! I'll be savin' 'em for the next," said Ellen, stoutly....
Oddly enough, Joan was presently restored to her husband and her duty through the medium of no less a person than Eduard Desmond.