“Come on Monday, by this train—­and I’ll meet you at the station in my trap.  I’ve got a fine stepper.”

“Right you are.  I’ll come on Monday.  It’s kind of you to want me so much.”

“I do want you.”

Her warm, glowing face in the frame of the window invited him, and they kissed.  Funny, thought Hill to himself, the fuss she had made at first, and she was all over him now....  But women were always like that—­wantons by nature and prudes by grace, and it was wonderful what a poor fight grace generally made of it.

Joanna, unaware that she had betrayed herself and womankind, leaned back comfortably in the train as it slid out of the station.  She was in a happy dream, hardly aware of her surroundings.  Mechanically she watched the great stucco amphitheatre of Marlingate glide past the window—­then the red throbbing darkness of a tunnel ... and the town was gone, like a bad dream, giving place to the tiny tilted fields and century-old hedges of the south-eastern weald.  Then gradually these sloped and lost themselves in marsh—­first only a green tongue running into the weald along the bed of the Brede River, then spreading north and south and east and west, from the cliff-line of England’s ancient coast to the sand-line of England’s coast to-day, from the spires of the monks of Battle to the spires of the monks of Canterbury.

Joanna was roused automatically by this return to her old surroundings.  She began to think of her trap waiting for her outside Rye station.  She wondered if Ellen would have come to meet her.  Yes, there she was on the platform ... wearing a green frock, too.  She’d come out of her blacks.  Joanna thrilled to a faint shock.  She wondered how many other revolutions Ellen had carried out in her absence.

“Well, old Jo ...”  It seemed to her that Ellen’s kiss was warmer than usual.  Or was it that her own heart was so warm...?

Ellen found her remarkably silent.  She had expected an outpouring of Joanna’s adventures, achievements and triumphs, combined with a desperate catechism as to just how much ruin had befallen Ansdore while she was away.  Instead of which Joanna seemed for the first time in Ellen’s experience, a little dreamy.  She had but little to say to Rye’s one porter, or to Peter Crouch, the groom.  She climbed up on the front seat of the trap, and took the reins.

“You’re looking well,” said Ellen—­“I can see your change has done you good.”

“Reckon it has, my dear.”

“Were you comfortable at the hotel?”

This, if anything, should have started Joanna off, but all she said was—­

“It wasn’t a bad place.”

“Well, if you don’t want to talk about your own affairs,” said Ellen to herself—­“you can listen to mine, for a change.  Joanna,”—­she added aloud—­“I came to meet you, because I’ve got something special to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

“Perhaps you can guess.”