“Martin, you’d never I You told me you were taking me to foreign parts, and I’ve told Mrs. Southland and Mrs. Furnese and Maudie Vine and half a dozen more all about my going to Paris and seeing the sights and hearing French spoken.”

“Yes—­perhaps it would be better to go abroad; Broomhill is wonderful, but you in Paris will be more wonderful than Broomhill—­even in the days before the flood.”

“I want to see the Eiffel Tower—­where they make the lemonade—­and I want to buy myself something really chick in the way of hats.”

“Joanna—­do you know the hat which suits you best?”

“Which?” she asked eagerly, with some hope for the feathers.

“The straw hat you tie on over your hair when you go out to the chickens first thing in the morning.”

“That old thing I Why I My!  Lor!  Martin!  That’s an old basket that I tie under my chin with a neckerchief of poor father’s.”

“It suits you better than any hat in the Rue St. Honore—­it’s brown and golden like yourself, and your hair comes creeping and curling from under it, and there’s a shadow on your face, over your eyes—­the shadow stops just above your mouth—­your mouth is all of your face that I can see dearly, and it’s your mouth that I love most ...”

He suddenly kissed it, ignoring her business with the reins and the chances of the road, pulling her round in her seat and covering her face with his, so that his eyelashes stroked her cheek.  She drew her hands up sharply to her breast, and with the jerk the horse stopped.

For a few moments they stayed so, then he released her and they moved on.  Neither of them spoke; the tears were in Joanna’s eyes and in her heart was a devouring tenderness that made it ache.  The trap lurched in the deep ruts of the road, which now had become a mass of shingle and gravel, skirting the beach.  Queer sea plants grew in the ruts, the little white sea-campions with their fat seed-boxes filled the furrows of the road as with a foam—­it seemed a pity and a shame to crush them, and one could tell by their fresh growth how long it was since wheels had passed that way.

At Jury’s Gap, a long white-daubed coastguard station marked the end of the road.  Only a foot-track ran out to the Ness.  They left the horse and trap at the station and went afoot.

“I told you it was a tedious place,” said Joanna.  Like a great many busy people she did not like walking, which she always looked upon as a waste of time.  Martin could seldom persuade her to come for a long walk.

It was a long walk up the Ness, and the going was bad, owing to the shingle.  The sea-campion grew everywhere, and in sunny corners the yellow-horned poppy put little spots of colour into a landscape of pinkish grey.  The sea was the same colour as the land, for the sun had sunk away into the low thick heavens, leaving the sea an unrelieved, tossed dun waste.

The wind came tearing across Rye Bay with a moan, lifting all the waves into little sharp bitter crests.