that all of a sudden.... But what was she
saying? Why, of course she had been quite right. She should ought to
have been cold from the start. That was her mistake--letting the thing
start when it could have no seemly ending ... a boy like that, nearly
young enough to be her son ... and yet she had been unable to deny him,
she had let him kiss her and court her--make love to her.... Worse than
that, she had made love to him, thrown herself at him, pursued him with
her love, refused to let him go ... and all the other things she had
done--changing for his sake from her decent ways ... breaking the
Sabbath, taking off her neck-band. She had been getting irreligious and
immodest, and now she was unhappy, and it served her right.

The house was quite still; everyone had gone to bed, and the moon filled
the middle of the window, splashing the bed, and Joanna in it, and the
walls, and the sagging beams of the ceiling. She thought of getting up
to pull down the blind, but had no more energy to do that than to bind
her hair. She wanted desperately to go to sleep. She lay on her side,
her head burrowed down into the pillow, her hands clenched under her
chin. Her bed was next the door, and beyond the door, against the wall
at right angles to it, was her chest of drawers, with Martin's
photograph in its black frame, and the photograph of his tombstone in a
frame with a lily worked on it. Her eyes strained towards them in the
darkness ... oh, Martin--Martin, why did I ever forget you?... But I
never forgot you ... Martin, I've never had my man.... I've got money,
two farms, lovely clothes--I'm just as good as a lady ... but I've never
had my man.... Seemingly I'll go down into the grave without him ...
but, oh, I do want ... the thing I was born for....

Sobs shook her broad shoulders as she lay there in the moonlight. But
they did not relieve her--her sobs ploughed deep into her soul ... they
turned strange furrows.... Oh, she was a bad woman, who deserved no
happiness. She'd always known it.

She lifted her head, straining her eyes through the darkness and tears
to gaze at Martin's photograph as if it were the Serpent in the
Wilderness. Perhaps all this had come upon her because she had been
untrue to his memory--and yet what had so appealed to her about Bertie
was that he was like Martin, though Ellen said he wasn't--well, perhaps
he wasn't.... But what was happening now? Something had come between her
and the photograph on the