to-day than ever at the Court or the Rectory. Besides, Miss
Godden, your position on Walland Marsh is very much better than ours.
You're a great personage, you know."

"Reckon folks talk about me," said Joanna proudly. "Maybe you've heard
'em."

He nodded.

"You've heard about me and Arthur Alce?"

"I've heard some gossip."

"Don't you believe it. I'm fond of Arthur, but he ain't my style--and I
could do better for myself ..."

She paused--her words seemed to hang in the flickering warmth of the
room. She was waiting for him to speak, and he felt a little shocked and
repelled. She was angling for him--he had never suspected that.

"I must go," he said, standing up.

"So soon?"

"Yes--tradition sends one home on Christmas Day."

He moved towards the door, and she followed him, glowing and majestic in
the shadows of the firelit room. Outside, the sky was washed with a
strange, fiery green, in which the new kindled stars hung like lamps.

They stood for a moment on the threshold, the warm, red house behind
them, before them the star-hung width and emptiness of the Marsh. Martin
blocked the sky for Joanna, as he turned and held out his hand. Then, on
the brink of love, she hesitated. A memory smote her--of herself
standing before another man who blocked the sky, and in whose eyes sat
the small, enslaved image of herself. Was she just being a fool
again?--Ought she to draw back while she had still the power, before she
became his slave, his little thing, and all her bigness was drowned in
his eyes. She knew that whatever she gave him now could never be taken
back. Here stood the master of the mistress of Ansdore.

As for Martin, his thoughts were of another kind.

"Good-bye," he said, renouncing her--for her boldness and her commonness
and all that she would mean of change and of foregoing--"Good-bye,
Joanna."

He had not meant to say her name, but it had come, and with it all the
departing adventure of love. She seemed to fall towards him, to lean
suddenly like a tree in a gale--he smelt a fresh, sweet smell of clean
cotton underclothing, of a plain soap, of free unperfumed hair ... then
she was in his arms, and he was kissing her warm, shy mouth, feeling
that for this moment he had been born.

Sec.12

"Well, where have you been?" asked Sir Harry, as his son walked in at
the hall door soon after six.

"I've been having dinner with Joanna Godden."

"The deuce you have."

"I looked in to see h