Aderhold answered. Presently, the loaf of bread in hand, he said that they must go on if they would reach the port before night, and that they gave warm thanks for kindness.... They left the friendly cottage with the sunny spread of grass and the bleaching linen and the kindly women. A dip of the land, a turn of the path, and all vanished as if they had sunk into earth. Before them, fraying the horizon, they saw the distant town.
Aderhold spoke. “You were there when you were a child. Do you remember it?”
She answered. “I remembered at last—not at first: not plainly. I remember the sea.”
Her voice was broken. He looked and saw that she was weeping.
He had not seen her so since the last time he had come to Heron’s cottage, and she had wept for her father’s death. There had been no weeping in prison, nor in that Judgement Hall, nor since. He knew without telling that though she felt grief, she controlled grief. But now, startled by a tide she had not looked for, control was beaten down. All about them was a solitariness, a green and silent, sunny world. She struggled for a moment, then with a gesture of wild sorrow, sank upon a wayside rise of earth and hid her face. “Weep it out,” said Aderhold in a shaken voice; “it will do you good.”
He stood near her, but did not watch her or touch her. Instead he broke the loaf of bread into portions and kept a lookout north and south and east and west. No human being came into range of vision. The slow minutes went by, then came Joan’s voice, broken yet, but steadying with every word. “All that is over now—I’ll not do that again.”
She came up to him and took a piece of the bread. “Let us go on. We can eat it as we go.”
They walked on.
“It was Gervaise and Lantern,” said Aderhold, “who told her that tale of a capture at the mill. They are ahead.... I have seen brave men and women, but I have seen none braver than you, Joan.... Life is very great. There are in it threads of all colours and every tone that is, and if happiness is not stable, neither is misery. You are brave—be brave enough to be happy!”
The sun declined, the town ahead grew larger against a soft and vivid sky. Now they could see the harbour and that there were ships at anchor. They now met, overtook, or were passed by people. Some spoke, some went on preoccupied, but none stopped and questioned them. They entered the town by a travelled way, slipping in with a crowd of carts and hucksters. Within, and standing for a moment looking back, they saw coming with dust and jingling the party that had passed them lying in the pit.