when he tried to stand in
her way.

"Let me go--I'm shut of you. I tell you, you ain't man enough for me."

Sec.32

She had told the cabman to drive to Charing Cross station, as she felt
unequal to the complications of travelling from Lewisham. It was a long
drive, and all the way Joanna sat and cried. She seemed to have cried a
great deal lately--her nature had melted in a strange way, and the tears
she had so seldom shed as a girl were now continually ready to fall--but
she had never cried as much as she cried this morning. By the time she
reached Charing Cross she was in desperate need of that powder-puff
Bertie had urged her to possess.

So this was the end--the end of the great romance which should have
given her girlhood back to her, but which instead seemed to have shut
her into a lonely and regretful middle-age. All her shining pride in
herself was gone--she saw herself as one who has irrevocably lost all
that makes life worth living ... pride and love. She knew that Bertie
did not love her--in his heart he was glad that she was going--all he
was sorry for was the manner of it, which might bring him disgrace. But
he would soon get over that, and then he would be thankful he was free,
and eventually he would marry some younger woman than herself ... and
she? Yes, she still loved him--but it would not be for long. She could
feel her love for him slowly dying in her heart. It was scarcely more
than pity now--pity for the little singing clerk whom she had caught and
would have put in a cage if he had not fluttered so terribly in her
hands.

When she arrived at Charing Cross a feeling of desolation was upon her.
A porter came to fetch her box, but Joanna--the great Joanna Godden, who
put terror into the markets of three towns--shrank back into the taxi,
loath to leave its comfortable shelter for the effort and racket of the
station. A dark, handsome, rather elderly man, was coming out of one of
the archways. Their eyes met and he at once turned his away, but Joanna
leapt for him--

"Sir Harry! Sir Harry Trevor! Don't you know me?"

Only too well, but he had not exactly expected her to claim
acquaintance. He felt bewildered when Joanna pushed her way to him
through the crowd and wrung his hand as if he was her only friend.

"Oh, Sir Harry, reckon I'm glad to see you!"

"I--I--" stuttered the baronet.

He looked rather flushed and sodden, and the dyeing of his hair was more
obvious than it had been.