“Ah-h-h,” said Joanna Godden.

She lifted her arms to her head with a gesture of weariness—­as she took out the pins her hair fell on her shoulders in great hanks and masses, golden and unsubstantial as the moon.

Slowly and draggingly she began to unfasten her clothes—­they fell off her, and lay like a pool round her feet.  She plunged into her stiff cotton nightgown, buttoning it at neck and wrists.  Then she knelt by her bed and said her prayers—­the same prayers that she had said ever since she was five.

The moonlight was coming straight into the room—­showing its familiar corners.  There was no trace of Ellen in this room—­nothing that was “artistic” or “in good taste.”  A lively pattern covered everything that could be so covered, but Joanna’s sentimental love of old associations had spared the original furniture—­the wide feather bed, the oaken chest of drawers, the wash-stand which was just a great chest covered with a towel.  Over her bed hung Poor Father’s Buffalo Certificate, the cherished symbol of all that was solid and prosperous and reputable in life.

She lay in bed.  After she got in she realized that she had forgotten to plait her hair, but she felt too languid for the effort.  Her hair spread round her on the pillow like a reproach.  For some mysterious reason her tears began to fall.  Her life seemed to reproach her.  She saw all her life stretching behind her for a moment—­the moment when she had stood before Socknersh her shepherd, seeing him dark against the sky, between the sun and moon.  That was when Men, properly speaking, had begun for her—­and it was fifteen years since then—­and where was she now?  Still at Ansdore, still without her man.

Albert had not asked her to marry him, nor, she felt desperately, did he mean to.  If he did, he would surely have spoken to-day.  And now besides, he was angry with her, disappointed, estranged.  She had upset him by turning cold like 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.