of my soul.'"

Joanna gulped.

"And be very thankful, too."

"What for?"

"For your repentance."

"Well, reckon I do feel sorry--and reckon, too, I done something to be
sorry for.... Oh, Lawrence, what a wicked owl I've been! If you'd told
me six year ago as I'd ever have come to this I'd have had a fit on the
ground."

Lawrence looked round him nervously. Whatever Joanna's objections to
private penance, she was curiously indifferent to confessing her sins to
all mankind in Charing Cross station. The platform was becoming crowded
again, and already their confessional had been invaded--a woman with a
baby was sitting on the end of it.

"Your train will be starting soon," said Lawrence--"let's go and find
you something to eat."

Sec.33

Joanna felt better after she had had a good cup of coffee and a poached
egg. She was surprised afterwards to find she had eaten so much.
Lawrence sat with her while she ate, then took her to find her porter,
her luggage and her train.

"But won't you lose your train to Africa?" asked Joanna.

"I'm only going as far as Waterloo this morning, and there's a train
every ten minutes."

"When do you start for Africa?"

"I think to-night."

"I wish you weren't going there. Why are you going?"

"Because I'm sent."

"When will you come back?"

"I don't know--perhaps never."

"I'm middling sorry you're going. What a place to send you to!--all
among niggers."

She was getting more like herself. He stood at the carriage door,
talking to her of indifferent things till the train started. The whistle
blew, and the train began to glide out of the station. Joanna waved her
hand to the grey figure standing on the platform beside the tramp's
bundle which was all that would go with it to the ends of the earth. She
did not know whether she pitied Lawrence or envied him.

"Reckon he's got some queer notions," she said to herself.

She leaned back in the carriage, feeling more at ease than she had felt
for weeks. She was travelling third class, for one of Lawrence's notions
was that everybody did so, and when Joanna had given him her purse to
buy her ticket it had never struck him that she did not consider
third-class travel "seemly" in one of her sex and position. However, the
carriage was comfortable, and occupied only by two well-conducted
females. Yes--she was certainly feeling better. She would never have
thought that merely telling her story to Lawrence would have made s