The Waterloo train was in the station and the people on the platform surged towards it, leaving Lawrence and Joanna stranded on their seat.  Lawrence looked at the train for a minute, then shook his head, as if in answer to some question he had asked himself.

“Look here, Jo,” he said, “won’t you tell me what’s happened?  I can’t quite understand you as it is.  Don’t tell me anything you’d rather not.”

Joanna sat upright and swallowed violently.

“It’s like this,” she said.  “I’ve just broken off my engagement to marry—­maybe you didn’t know I was engaged to be married?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, I was.  I was engaged to a young chap—­a young chap in an office.  I met him at Marlingate, when I was staying there that time.  I thought he was like Martin—­that’s what made me take to him at the first.  But he wasn’t like Martin—­not really in his looks and never in his ways.  And at last it got more’n I could bear, and I broke with him this morning and came away—­and I reckon he ain’t sorry, neither....  I’m thirteen year older than him.”

Her tears began to flow again, but the platform was temporarily deserted.  Lawrence waited for her to go on—­he suspected a tragedy which had not yet been revealed.

“Oh, my heart’s broke,” she continued—­“reckon I’m done for, and there’s nothing left for me.”

“But, Jo—­is this—­this affair quite finished?  Perhaps ...  I mean to say, quarrels can be made up, you know.”

“Not this one,” said Joanna.  “It’s been too much.  For days I’ve watched him getting tired of me, and last night he turned on me because for his sake I’d done what no woman should do.”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she was dismayed.  She had not meant to say them.  Would Lawrence understand?  What would he think of her?—­a clergyman....  She turned on him a face crimson and suffused with tears, to meet a gaze as serene as ever.  Then suddenly a new feeling came to her—­something apart from horror at herself and shame at his knowing, and yet linked strangely with them both—­something which was tenderer than any shame and yet more ruthless....  Her last guard broke down.

“Lawrence, I’ve been wicked, I’ve been bad—­I’m sorry—­Lawrence."...

“Tell me as little or as much as you like, dear Jo.”

Joanna gripped his arm; she had driven him into the corner of the seat, where he sat with his bundle on his lap, his ear bent to her mouth, while she crowded up against him, pouring out her tale.  Every now and then he said gently—­“Sh-sh-sh”—­when he thought that her confession was penetrating the further recesses of Charing Cross....

“Oh, Lawrence, I feel so bad—­I feel so wicked—­I never should have thought it of myself.  I didn’t feel wicked at first, but I did afterwards.  Oh, Lawrence, tell me what I’m to do.”