“Then it’s a choice between your child and me.  If you do this mad thing, Joanna, you’ll have to go.  I can’t have you ever coming near me and Tip—­it isn’t only for my own sake—­it’s for his.”

“Reckon we’re both hurting each other for somebody else’s sake.  But I ain’t angry with you, Ellen, same as you’re angry with me.”

“I am angry with you—­I can’t help it.  You go and do this utterly silly and horrible thing, and then instead of making the best you can of it for everybody’s sake, you go on blundering worse and worse.  Such utter ignorance of the world ... such utter ignorance of your own self ... how d’you think you’re going to manage without Ansdore?  Why, it’s your very life—­you’ll be utterly lost without it.  Think of yourself, starting an entirely new life at your age—­nearly forty.  It’s impossible.  You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for.  But you’ll find out when it’s too late, and then both you and your unfortunate child ull have to suffer.”

“If I married Bert I couldn’t keep on Ansdore.  He wouldn’t marry me unless I came to London—­I know that now.  He’s set on business.  I’d have to go and live with him in a street ... then we’d both be miserable, all three be miserable.  Now if I go off alone, maybe later on I can get a bit of land, and run another farm in foreign parts—­by Chichester or Southampton—­just a little one, to keep me busy.  Reckon that ud be fine and healthy for my child ...”

“Your child seems to be the only thing you care about.  Really to hear you talk, one ud almost think you were glad.”

“I am glad.”

Ellen sprang to her feet.

“There’s no good going on with this conversation.  You’re quite without feeling and quite without shame.  I don’t know if you’ll come to your senses later, and not perhaps feel quite so glad that you have ruined your life, disgraced your family, broken my heart, brought shame and trouble into the life of a good and decent man.  But at present I’m sick of you.”

She walked towards the door.

“Ellen,” cried Joanna—­“don’t go away like that—­don’t think that of me.  I ain’t glad in that way.”

But Ellen would not turn or speak.  She went out of the door with a queer, white draggled look about her.

“Ellen,” cried Joanna a second time, but she knew it was no good....

Well, she was alone now, if ever a woman was.

She stood staring straight in front of her, out of the little flower-pot obscured window, into the far distances of the Marsh.  Once more the Marsh wore its strange, occasional look of being under the sea, but this time it was her own tears that had drowned it.

“Child—­what if the old floods came again?” she seemed to hear Martin’s voice as it had spoken in a far-off, half forgotten time....  He had talked to her about those old floods, he had said they might come again, and she had said they couldn’t....  My!  How they used to argue together in those days.  He had said that if the floods came back to drown the Marsh, all the church bells would ring under the sea....