chest of drawers. With a sudden chill at her
heart, she realized that it was the door opening.

"Who's there?" she cried in a hoarse angry whisper.

"Don't be frightened, dear--don't be frightened, my sweet Jo--" said
Bertie Hill.

Sec.23

She could not think--she could only feel. It was morning--that white
light was morning, though it was like the moon. Under it the Marsh lay
like a land under the sea--it must have looked like this when the keels
of the French boats swam over it, high above Ansdore, and Brodnyx, and
Pedlinge, lying like red apples far beneath, at the bottom of the sea.
That was nonsense ... but she could not think this morning, she could
only feel.

He had not been gone an hour, but she must find him. She must be with
him--just feel him near her. She must see his head against the window,
hear the heavy, slow sounds of his moving. She slipped on her clothes
and twisted up her hair, and went down into the empty, stir-less house.
No one was about--even her own people were in bed. The sun was not yet
up, but the white dawn was pouring into the house, through the windows,
through the chinks. Joanna stood in the midst of it. Then she opened the
door and went out into the yard, which was a pool of cold light, ringed
round with barns and buildings and reed-thatched haystacks. It was queer
how this cold, still, trembling dawn hurt her--seemed to flow into her,
to be part of herself, and yet to wound.... She had never felt like this
before--she could never have imagined that love would make her feel like
this, would make her see beauty in her forsaken yard at dawn--not only
see but feel that beauty, physically, as pain. Her heart wounded
her--her knees were failing--she went back into the house.

A wooden chair stood in the passage outside the kitchen door, and she
sat down on it. She was still unable to think, and she knew now that she
did not want to think--it might make her afraid. She wanted only to
remember.... He had called her the loveliest, sweetest, most beautiful
woman in the world.... She repeated his words over and over again,
calling up the look with which he had said them ... oh, those eyes of
his--slanty, saucy, secret, loving eyes....

She wondered why he did not come down. She could not imagine that he had
turned into bed and gone to sleep--that he did not know she was sitting
here waiting for him in the dawn. For a moment she thought of going up
and knocking at his door--then she