g she felt calmer. Some queer,
submerged struggle seemed to be over. As a matter of fact, her affair
was more uncertain than ever. After Albert's kiss, they had had no
discussion and very little conversation. He had taken her back to the
hotel, and had kissed her again--this time on the warm, submissive mouth
she lifted to him. He had said--"I'll come and see you at Ansdore--I've
got another week." And she had said--nothing. She did not know if he
wanted to marry her, or even if she wanted to marry him. She did not
worry about how--or if--she should explain him to Ellen. All her
cravings and uncertainties were swallowed up in a great quiet, a strange
quiet which was somehow all the turmoil of her being expressed in
silence.

The next day he was true to his promise, and saw her off--sitting
decorously in her first-class carriage "For Ladies Only."

"You'll come and see me at Ansdore?" she said, as the moment of
departure drew near, and he said nothing about last night's promise.

"Do you really want me to come?"

"Reckon I do."

"I'll come, then."

"Which day?"

"Say Monday, or Tuesday."

"Come on Monday, by this train--and I'll meet you at the station in my
trap. I've got a fine stepper."

"Right you are. I'll come on Monday. It's kind of you to want me so
much."

"I do want you."

Her warm, glowing face in the frame of the window invited him, and they
kissed. Funny, thought Hill to himself, the fuss she had made at first,
and she was all over him now.... But women were always like
that--wantons by nature and prudes by grace, and it was wonderful what a
poor fight grace generally made of it.

Joanna, unaware that she had betrayed herself and womankind, leaned back
comfortably in the train as it slid out of the station. She was in a
happy dream, hardly aware of her surroundings. Mechanically she watched
the great stucco amphitheatre of Marlingate glide past the window--then
the red throbbing darkness of a tunnel ... and the town was gone, like a
bad dream, giving place to the tiny tilted fields and century-old hedges
of the south-eastern weald. Then gradually these sloped and lost
themselves in marsh--first only a green tongue running into the weald
along the bed of the Brede River, then spreading north and south and
east and west, from the cliff-line of England's ancient coast to the
sand-line of England's coast to-day, from the spires of the monks of
Battle to the spires of the monks of Canterbury.