Her body’s peace between the cool, coarse sheets seemed to thrill to her soul.  She felt at home and at rest.  It was funny being in bed at that time in the afternoon—­scarcely past four o’clock—­it was funny, but it was good.  The sunshine was coming into the room, a spill of misty gold on the floor and furniture, and from where she lay she could see the green boundaries of the Marsh.  Oh, it would be terrible when she saw that Marsh no more ... the tears rose, and she turned her face to the pillow.  It was all over now—­all her ambition, all her success, all the greatness of Joanna Godden.  She had made Ansdore great and prosperous though she was a woman, and then she had lost it because she was a woman....  Words that she had uttered long ago came back into her mind.  She saw herself standing in the dairy, in front of Martha Tilden, whose face she had forgotten.  She was saying:  “It’s sad to think you’ve kept yourself straight for years and then gone wrong at last....”

Yes, it was sad ... and now she was being punished for it; but wrapped up in her punishment, sweetening its very heart, was a comfort she did not deserve.  Ansdore was slowly fading in her thoughts, as it had always faded in the presence of any vital instinct, whether of love or death.  Ansdore could never be to her what her child would be—­none of her men, except perhaps Martin, could have been to her what her child would be....  “If it’s a boy I’ll call it Martin—­if it’s a girl I’ll call it Ellen,” he said to herself.  Then she doubted whether Ellen would appreciate the compliment ... but she would not let herself think of Ellen to-night.  That was to-morrow’s evil.

“I’ll have to make some sort of a plan, though—­I’ll have to sell this place and give Ellen a share of it.  And me—­where ull I go?”

She must go pretty far, so that when the child came Brodnyx and Pedlinge would not get to know about it.  She would have to go at least as far as Brighton ... then she remembered Martha Relf and her lodgings at Chichester—­“that wouldn’t be bad, to go to Martha just for a start.  Me leaving Ansdore for the same reason as she left it thirteen year ago ... that’s queer.  The mistress who got shut of her, coming to her and saying—­’Look here, Martha, take me in, so’s I can have my child in peace same as you had yours’ ...  I should ought to get some stout money for this farm—­eight thousand pounds if it’s eightpence—­though reckon the Government ull want about half of it and we’ll have all that terrification started again ... howsumever, I guess I’ll get enough of it to live on, even when Ellen has her bit ... and maybe the folk around here ull think I’m sold up because my case has bust me, and that’ll save me something of their talk.”

Well, well, she was doing the best she could—­though Lawrence on his blind, obedient way to Africa was scarcely going on a farther, lonelier journey than that on which Joanna was setting out.

“Oh, Martin,” she whispered, lifting her eyes to his picture on her chest of drawers—­“I wish I could feel you close.”