ould have made up for it. He could see people--gaitered
farmers, clay-booted farm-hands--staring at them from the pavement. He
suddenly felt himself--not without justification--the chief spectacle of
Romney market-day.

"Please don't think about it any more, Miss Godden," he said hurriedly.
"I certainly should never presume to question anything you ever said or
did to Mr. Pratt or anybody else. And, if you'll excuse me, I must go
on--I'm a farmer now, you know," with a ghastly attempt at a smile, "and
I've plenty of business in the market."

"Reckon you have," said Joanna, her voice suddenly falling flat.

He snatched off his cap and left her standing in the middle of the
street.

Sec.8

He did not let himself think of her for an hour or more--the episode
struck him as grotesque and he preferred not to dwell on it. But after
he had done his business of buying a farm horse, with the help of Mr.
Southland who was befriending his inexperience, he found himself
laughing quietly, and he suddenly knew that he was laughing over the
interview with Joanna. And directly he had laughed, he was smitten with
a sense of pathos--her bustle and self-confidence which hitherto had
roused his dislike, now showed as something rather pathetic, a mere
trapping of feminine weakness which would deceive no one who saw them at
close quarters. Under her loud voice, her almost barbaric appearance,
her queerly truculent manner, was a naive mixture of child and
woman--soft, simple, eager to please. He knew of no other woman who
would have given herself away quite so directly and naturally as she
had ... and his manhood was flattered. He was far from suspecting the
practical nature of her intentions, but he could see that she liked him,
and wanted to stand in his favour. She was not sexless, after all.

This realization softened and predisposed him; he felt a little
contrite, too--he remembered how her voice had suddenly dragged and
fallen flat at his abrupt farewell.... She was disappointed in his
reception of her offers of peace--she had been incapable of appreciating
the attitude his sophistication was bound to take up in the face of such
an outburst. She had proved herself, too, a generous soul--frankly
owning herself in the wrong and trying by every means to make
atonement.... Few women would have been at once so frank and so
practical in their repentance. That he suspected the repentance was
largely for his sake did not diminish hi