Nan, experienced in such things, as one is at the age of thirty-three if one has led a well-spent life, knew now beyond peradventure what had happened to Barry and what would never happen again between him and her.  So that was that, as she put it, definite and matter-of-fact to herself about it.  He had stopped wanting her.  Well then, she must stop wanting him, as speedily as might be.  It took a little time.  You could not shoot down the hills of the emotions with the lightning rapidity with which you shot down the roads.  Also, the process was excruciatingly painful.  You had to unmake so many plans, unthink so many thoughts....  Oh, but that was nothing.  You had to hear his voice softened to someone else, see the smile in his eyes caressing someone else, feel his whole mind, his whole soul, reaching out in protecting, adoring care to someone else’s charm and loveliness ... as once, as so lately, they had reached out to yours....  That was torture for the bravest, far worse than any bulls or seas or precipices could be to Gerda.  Yet it had to be gone through, as Gerda had to leap from towering cliffs into wild seas and ride calmly among fierce cattle....  When Nan woke in the night it was like toothache, a sharp, gnawing, searing hell of pain.  Memory choked her, bitter self-anger for joy once rejected and then forever lost took her by the throat, present desolation drowned her soul in hard, slow tears, jealousy scorched and seared.

But, now every morning, pride rose, mettlesome and gallant, making her laugh and talk, so that no one guessed.  And with pride, a more reckless physical daring than usual; a kind of scornful adventurousness, that courted danger for its own sake, and wordlessly taunted the weaker spirit with “Follow if you like and can.  If you don’t like, if you can’t, I am the better woman in that way, though you may be the beloved.”  And the more the mettle of the little beloved rose to meet the challenge, the hotter the pace grew.  Perhaps they both felt, without knowing they felt it, that there was something in Barry which leaped instinctively out to applaud reckless courage, some element in himself which responded to it even while he called it foolhardy.  You could tell that Barry was of that type, by the quick glow of his eyes and smile.  But the rivalry in daring was not really for Barry; Barry’s choice was made.  It was at bottom the last test of mettle, the ultimate challenge from the loser to the winner, in the lists chosen by the loser as her own.  It was also—­for Nan was something of a bully—­the heckling of Gerda.  She might have won one game, and that the most important, but she should be forced to own herself beaten in another, after being dragged painfully along rough and dangerous ways.  And over and above and beyond all this, beyond rivalry and beyond Gerda, was the eternal impatience for adventure as such, for quick, vehement living, which was the essence of Nan.  She found things more fun that way:  that summed it.