gs since Martin's days--the small gift of sight that he had
given her had gone out with the light of his own eyes, and this evening
all she saw was the flooded pastures, which meant poor grazing for her
tegs due to come down from the Coast, and her lambs new-born on the Kent
Innings. As for Ellen, the Marsh had always stood with her for
unrelieved boredom. Its eternal flatness--the monotony of its roads
winding through an unvarying landscape of reeds and dykes and grazings,
past farms each of which was almost exactly like the one before it, with
red walls and orange roofs and a bush of elms and oaks--the wearisome
repetition of its seasons--the mists and floods of winter, the may and
buttercups of spring, the hay and meadow-sweet and wild carrot of the
summer months, the bleakness and winds of autumn--all this was typical
of her life there, water-bound, cut off from all her heart's desire of
variety and beauty and elegance, of the life to which she must now
return because her attempt to live another had failed and left her
stranded on a slag-heap of disillusion from which even Ansdore was a
refuge.

Ellen sat very trim and erect beside Joanna in the trap. She wore a neat
grey coat and skirt, obviously not of local, nor indeed of English,
make, and a little toque of flowers. She had taken Joanna's breath away
on Rye platform; it had been very much like old times when she came home
for the holidays and checked the impulse of her sister's love by a
baffling quality of self-containment. Joanna, basing her expectations on
the Bible story of the Prodigal Son rather than on the experiences of
the past winter, had looked for a subdued penitent, surfeited with
husks, who, if not actually casting herself at her sister's feet and
offering herself as her servant, would at least have a hang-dog air and
express her gratitude for so much forgiveness. Instead of which Ellen
had said--"Hullo, Jo--it's good to see you again," and offered her a
cool, delicately powdered cheek, which Joanna's warm lips had kissed
with a queer, sad sense of repulse and humiliation. Before they had been
together long, it was she who wore the hang-dog air--for some
unconscionable reason she felt in the wrong, and found herself asking
her sister polite, nervous questions about the journey.

This attitude prevailed throughout the evening--on the drive home, and
at the excellent supper they sat down to: a stuffed capon and a bottle
of wine, truly a genteel feas