duced a cup of cocoa sooner or later
from one of the girls.

Martin did not join in the discussion--he felt that his presence
slightly damped the company, and for him to talk might spoil their
chances of forgetting him. He watched Miss Godden as she ate and laughed
and kept the conversation rolling--he also watched Arthur Alce, trying
to use this man's devotion as a clue to what was left of Joanna's
mystery. Alce struck him as a dull fellow, and he put down his
faithfulness to the fact that having once fallen into love as into a rut
he had lain there ever since like a sheep on its back. He could see
that Alce did not altogether approve of his own choice--her vigour and
flame, her quick temper, her free airs--she was really too big for these
people; and yet she was so essentially one of them ... their roots
mingled in the same soil, the rich, damp, hardy soil of the Marsh.

His attitude towards her was undergoing its second and final change. Now
he knew that he would never want to flirt with her. He did not want her
tentatively or temporarily. He still wanted her adventurously, but her
adventure was not the adventure of siege and capture but of peaceful
holding. Like the earth, she would give her best not to the man who
galloped over her, but to the man who chose her for his home and
settlement. Thus he would hold her, or not at all. Very likely after
to-day he would renounce her--he had not yet gone too far, his eyes were
still undazzled, and he could see the difficulties and limitations in
which he was involving himself by such a choice. He was a gentleman and
a townsman--he trod her country only as a stranger, and he knew that in
spite of the love which the Marsh had made him give it in the few months
of his dwelling, his thoughts still worked for years ahead, when better
health and circumstances would allow him to go back to the town, to a
quick and crowded life. Could he then swear himself to the slow blank
life of the Three Marshes, where events move deliberately as a plough?
To the empty landscape, to the flat miles? He would have to love her
enough to endure the empty flatness that framed her. He could never take
her away, any more than he could take away Ansdore or North Farthing. He
must make a renunciation for her sake--could he do so? And after all,
she was common stuff--a farmer's daughter, bred at the National School.
By taking her he would be making just a yokel of himself.... Yet was it
worth clinging to