the whitewashed thickness of her
bedroom walls between her and the rest of the house. She did not trouble
to light her candle. Her room was in darkness, except for one splash of
light reflected from her mirror which held the moon. She went over to
the window and looked out. The marsh swam in a yellow, misty lake of
moonlight. There was a strange air of unsubstantiality about it--the
earth was not the solid earth, the watercourses were moonlight rather
than water, the light was water rather than light, the trees were
shadows....

"Ah-h-h," said Joanna Godden.

She lifted her arms to her head with a gesture of weariness--as she took
out the pins her hair fell on her shoulders in great hanks and masses,
golden and unsubstantial as the moon.

Slowly and draggingly she began to unfasten her clothes--they fell off
her, and lay like a pool round her feet. She plunged into her stiff
cotton nightgown, buttoning it at neck and wrists. Then she knelt by her
bed and said her prayers--the same prayers that she had said ever since
she was five.

The moonlight was coming straight into the room--showing its familiar
corners. There was no trace of Ellen in this room--nothing that was
"artistic" or "in good taste." A lively pattern covered everything that
could be so covered, but Joanna's sentimental love of old associations
had spared the original furniture--the wide feather bed, the oaken chest
of drawers, the wash-stand which was just a great chest covered with a
towel. Over her bed hung Poor Father's Buffalo Certificate, the
cherished symbol of all that was solid and prosperous and reputable in
life.

She lay in bed. After she got in she realized that she had forgotten to
plait her hair, but she felt too languid for the effort. Her hair spread
round her on the pillow like a reproach. For some mysterious reason her
tears began to fall. Her life seemed to reproach her. She saw all her
life stretching behind her for a moment--the moment when she had stood
before Socknersh her shepherd, seeing him dark against the sky, between
the sun and moon. That was when Men, properly speaking, had begun for
her--and it was fifteen years since then--and where was she now? Still
at Ansdore, still without her man.

Albert had not asked her to marry him, nor, she felt desperately, did he
mean to. If he did, he would surely have spoken to-day. And now
besides, he was angry with her, disappointed, estranged. She had upset
him by turning cold like