Being marsh bred, Joanna did not take what seemed the obvious way to the cottage, across the low pastures by the Kent Ditch; instead, she went back a few yards to where a dyke ran under the road.  She followed it out on the marsh, and when it cut into another dyke she followed that, walking on the bank beside the great teazle.  A plank bridge took her across between two willows, and after some more such movements, like a pawn on a chess-board, she had crossed three dykes and was at the shepherd’s gate.

He was working at the farther side of the garden and did not see her till she called him.  She had been to his cottage only once before, when he complained of the roof leaking, but Socknersh would not have shown surprise if he had seen Old Goodman of the marsh tales standing at his door.  Joanna had stern, if somewhat arbitrary, notions of propriety, and now not only did she refuse to come inside the gate, but she made him come and stand outside it, among the seed-grasses which were like the ghost of hay.

It struck her that she had timed her visit a little too late.  Already the brightness had gone from the sunset, leaving a dull red ball hanging lustreless between the clouds.  There was no wind, but the air seemed to be moving slowly up from the sea, heavy with mist and salt and the scent of haws and blackberries, of dew-soaked grass and fleeces....  Socknersh stood before her with his blue shirt open at the neck.  From him came a smell of earth and sweat ... his clothes smelt of sheep....

She opened her mouth to tell him that she was highly displeased with the way he had managed her flock since the shearing, but instead she only said: 

“Look!”

Over the eastern rim of the Marsh the moon had risen, a red, lightless disk, while the sun, red and lightless too, hung in the west above Rye Hill.  The sun and the moon looked at each other across the marsh, and midway between them, in the spell of their flushed, haunted glow, stood Socknersh, big and stooping, like some lonely beast of the earth and night....  A strange fear touched Joanna—­she tottered, and his arm came out to save her....

It was as if Marsh itself enfolded her, for his clothes and skin were caked with the soil of it....  She opened her eyes, and looking up into his, saw her own face, infinitely white and small, looking down at her out of them.  Joanna Godden looked at her out of Socknersh’s eyes.  She stirred feebly, and she found that he had set her a little way from him, still holding her by the shoulders, as if he feared she would fall.

“Do you feel better, missus?”

“I’m all right,” she snapped.

“I beg your pardon if I took any liberty, missus.  But I thought maybe you’d turned fainty-like.”

“You thought wrong”—­her anger was mounting—­“I trod on a mole-hill.  You’ve messed my nice alpaca body—­if you can’t help getting dirt all over yourself you shouldn’t ought to touch a lady even if she’s in a swound.”