Joanna nearly fainted. She fell in a heap against the window, looking more than ever, as the sunshine poured on her, like a great golden, broken flower. She felt herself choking and managed to right herself--the window was down, and a faint puff of air came in from the sea, lifting her hair as she leaned back against the wooden wall of the carriage, her mouth a little open.... She felt better now, but still so frightened.... She was done for, she was finished--there would not be any more talk of going back and picking up things where she had let them drop. She would have to marry Bertie--there was no help for it, she would send him a telegram from Brodnyx station. Oh, that this should have happened!... And she had been feeling so much easier in her mind--she had almost begun to feel happy again, thinking of the old home and the old life. And now she knew that they had gone for ever--the old home and the old life. She had cut herself away from both--she would have to marry Albert, to shut her little clerk in prison after all, and herself with him. She would have to humble herself before him, she would have to promise to go and live with him in London, do all she possibly could to make his marriage easy for him. He did not want to marry her, and she did not want to marry him, but there was no help for it, they must marry now, because of what their love had given them before it died. She had no tears for this new tragedy. She leaned forward in her seat, her hands clasped between her knees, her eyes staring blankly at the carriage wall as if she saw there her future written ... herself and Albert growing old together, or rather herself growing old while Albert lived through his eager, selfish youth--herself and Albert shut up together ... how he would scold her, how he would reproach her--he would say "You have brought me to this," and in time he would come to hate her, his fellow-prisoner who had shut the door on both of them--and he would hate her child ... they would never have married except for the child, so he would hate her child, scold it, make it miserable ... it would grow up in an unhappy home, with parents who did not love each other, who owed it a grudge for coming to them--her child, her precious child.... Still in her heart, alive under all the fear, was that thrill of divine joy which had come to her in the first moment of realization. Terror, shame, despair--none of them could kill it, for that joy was a part of her being, part of the new being which had quickened in her. It belonged to them both--it was the secret they shared ... joy, unutterable joy. Yes, she was glad she was going to have this child--she would still be glad even in the prison-house of marriage, she would still be glad even in the desert of no-marriage, every tongue wagging, every finger pointing, every heart despising. Nothing could take her joy from her--make her less than joyful mother....