nypenny, whose statue now stares blindly out to sea. He
was a man naturally interested in topography and generally "read up" the
places he visited, but he had never before found a woman who cared to
listen to that sort of stuff.

After luncheon, drinking coffee in the lounge, they became more personal
and intimate. He told her about himself. His name was Albert Hill--his
father was dead, and he lived with his mother and sister at Lewisham. He
had a good position as clerk in a firm of carpet-makers. He was
twenty-five years old, and doing well. Joanna became confidential in her
turn. Her confidences mostly concerned the prosperity of her farm, the
magnitude of its acreage, the success of this year's lambing and last
year's harvest, but they also included a few sentimental adventures--she
had had ever so many offers of marriage, including one from a clergyman,
and she had once been engaged to a baronet's son.

He wondered if she was pitching him a yarn, but did not think so; if she
was, she would surely do better for herself than a three hundred acre
farm, and an apparently unlimited dominion over the bodies and souls of
clergymen. By this time he was liking her very much, and as he
understood she had only two days more at Marlingate, he asked her to go
to the pier theatre with him the next evening.

Joanna accepted, feeling that she was committing herself to a desperate
deed. But she was reckless now--she, as well as Hill, thought of those
two poor days which were all she had left. She must do something in
those two days to bind him, for she knew that she could not let him go
from her--she knew that she loved again.

Sec.15

She did not love as she had loved the first time. Then she had loved
with a calmness and an acceptance which were impossible to her now. She
had trusted fate and trusted the beloved, but now she was unsure of
both. She was restless and tormented, and absorbed as she had never been
in Martin. Her love consumed every other emotion, mental or physical--it
would not let her sleep or eat or listen to music. It kept her whole
being concentrated on the new force that had disturbed it--she could
think of nothing but Albert Hill, and her thoughts were haggard and
anxious, picturing their friendship at a standstill, failing, and
lost.... Oh, she must not lose him--she could not bear to lose him--she
must bind him somehow in the short time she had left.

There were intervals in which she became unea