She took her ticket; was fortunate enough to catch a quick train--there were very few in the day to such an out-of-the-way place. She was quite alone in the carriage. She watched the landscape eagerly; watched the foul fog rise as they left London; watched the slow development of a dazzling autumn day. CHAPTER XIX. THERE was no one she knew at the station; she had been nervously apprehensive that there would be. She had expected to create a small flutter among the railway people--measuring the intensity of their emotions during the last year by her own. No one was surprised to see her. The station-master civilly said good-morning. The porter pulled his cap and added that they had not sent from Folly Corner to meet her. Should he send for the blacksmith’s pony-cart? She shook her head, stepping out into the sun. She crossed the common, noting every detail of the landscape with ecstasy. It all soothed and comforted her so inexpressibly, so mystically; she fell into it with a delicious sensation of ease. Across the common a woman was driving kids. The old goat had got free and was awkwardly humping after her, dragging its tether chain. She saw everything; her heart swelled in her throat at every step, at every new sight. She saw it all, felt it all--even to the white horse silhouetted against the broken black sail of the disused windmill. Each side of her, as she walked on the well-kept road, the common at her back, were the clean-cut black ditches, half filled with iron-reddened water, and bound by the silver of dew-soaked, glittering grass. In a field a man was harvesting swedes. The sick, sweet smell of them hung in the air; they were bulbed, tawny and big on the black ground. She stood and watched him, finding added peace in these simple occupations--the land drew her. He was stuffing the roots into a bloated, dun-colored sack. They bulged here and bulged there until the canvas looked like an unwieldly, headless sheep of some mammoth breed. He threw up the green tops into a cart, the prongs of his fork flashing in the sun. Everything was bright and cold and hard; the newly-painted shafts of the cart blood-red and angry against the fierce, clear blue of the drifting sky. She noted everything minutely. She was struck by the fantastic appearance of a copse of bare bushes--a gray-brown film of mystery. She didn’t throw a backward glance at London, with its crowds, its hectic flow of life. She was at home. She didn’t even think very much of Jethro; didn’t speculate on her reception at Folly Corner. She wanted the place, the influences of the country, as distinct from human preference. She dreaded the thought of a man’s love. All she had longed for was placidity. The clear, hard day, the slow, simple occupations of the few men and women she saw, gave her that.