and self-confidence which hitherto had roused his dislike, now showed as something rather pathetic, a mere trapping of feminine weakness which would deceive no one who saw them at close quarters.  Under her loud voice, her almost barbaric appearance, her queerly truculent manner, was a naive mixture of child and woman—­soft, simple, eager to please.  He knew of no other woman who would have given herself away quite so directly and naturally as she had ... and his manhood was flattered.  He was far from suspecting the practical nature of her intentions, but he could see that she liked him, and wanted to stand in his favour.  She was not sexless, after all.

This realization softened and predisposed him; he felt a little contrite, too—­he remembered how her voice had suddenly dragged and fallen flat at his abrupt farewell....  She was disappointed in his reception of her offers of peace—­she had been incapable of appreciating the attitude his sophistication was bound to take up in the face of such an outburst.  She had proved herself, too, a generous soul—­frankly owning herself in the wrong and trying by every means to make atonement....  Few women would have been at once so frank and so practical in their repentance.  That he suspected the repentance was largely for his sake did not diminish his respect of it.  When he met Joanna Godden again, he would be nice to her.

The opportunity was given him sooner than he expected.  Walking up the High Street in quest of some quiet place for luncheon—­every shop and inn seemed full of thick smells of pipes and beer and thick noises of agricultural and political discussion conducted with the mouth full—­he saw Miss Godden’s trap waiting for her outside the New Inn.  He recognized her equipage, not so much from its make or from the fat cob in the shafts, as from the figure of old Stuppeny dozing at Smiler’s head.  Old Stuppeny went everywhere with Miss Godden, being now quite unfit for work on the farm.  His appearance was peculiar, for he seemed, like New Romney church tower, to be built in stages.  He wore, as a farm-labourer of the older sort, a semi-clerical hat, which with his long white beard gave him down to the middle of his chest a resemblance to that type still haunting the chapels of marsh villages and known as Aged Evangelist—­from his chest to his knees, he was mulberry coat and brass buttons, Miss Joanna Godden’s coachman, though as the vapours of the marsh had shaped him into a shepherd’s crook, his uniform lost some of its effect.  Downwards from the bottom of his coat he was just a farm-labourer, with feet of clay and corduroy trousers tied with string.

His presence showed that Miss Godden was inside the New Inn, eating her dinner, probably finishing it, or he would not have brought the trap round.  It was just like her, thought Martin, with a tolerant twist to his smile, to go to the most public and crowded place in Romney for her meal, instead of shrinking into the decent quiet of some shop.  But Joanna Godden had done more for herself in that interview than she had thought, for though she still repelled she was no longer uninteresting.  Martin gave up searching for that quiet meal, and walked into the New Inn.