"No one can keep me if I want to go," and the old cuckoo-clock outside seemed to tick in reply:

"Can no one keep her if she wants to go?"

She finished her preparations; as she fastened the coral necklace round her neck the face of Martin Warlock was suddenly before her. He had been perhaps at her elbow all day.

"I like him and I think he likes me," she said to the mirror. "I've got one friend," and her thought still further was that even if he didn't like her he couldn't prevent her liking him.

She went down to the drawing-room and found Uncle Mathew, alone, waiting for her.

"Here I am, Maggie," he said. "And let's get out of this as quick as we can."

"I must go and say good-night to the aunts," she said.

She went upstairs to Aunt Anne's bedroom. Entering it was always to her like passing into a shadowed church after the hot sunshine—the long, thin room with high slender windows, the long hard bed, of the most perfect whiteness and neatness, the heavy black-framed picture of "The Ascension" over the bed, and the utter stillness broken by no sound of clock or bell—even the fire seemed frozen into a glassy purity in the grate.

Her aunt was sitting, as so often Maggie found her, in a stiff-backed chair, her hands folded on her lap, staring in front of her. Her eyes were like the open eyes of a dead woman; it was as though, with a great effort of almost desperate concentration, she were driving her vision against some obstinate world of opposition, and the whole of life had meanwhile stayed to watch the issue.

A thin pale light from some street lamp lay, a faintly golden shadow, across the white ceiling.

Maggie stood by the door.

"I've come to say good-night, aunt."

"Ah, Maggie dear, is that you?" The pale oval face turned towards her.

"You won't be very late, will you?"

"Hadn't I better have a key, not to bother Martha?"

"Oh, Martha won't have gone to bed."

Maggie felt as though her whole evening would be spoilt did she know that Martha was waiting for her at the end of it.

"Oh, but it will be such a pity—"

"Martha will let you in, dear. Come and kiss me; I hope that you'll enjoy yourself."

And then the strangest thing happened. Maggie bent down. She felt a tear upon her cheek and then the thin strong arms held her, for an instant, in an almost threatening embrace.

"Good-night, dear aunt," she said; but, outside the room, she had to stand for a moment in the dark passage to regain her control; her heart was beating with wild unreasoning terror. Although she had brushed her cheek with her hand the cold touch of the tears still lingered there.

Outside the house they were free. It looked so close and dark behind them that Maggie shivered a little and put her arm through her uncle's.

"That's all right," he said, patting her hand. "We're going to enjoy ourselves."

She looked up and saw Martin Warlock facing her. The unexpected meeting held both of them silent for a moment. To her it seemed that he had risen out of the very stones of the pavement, at her bidding, to make her evening wonderful. He looked so strong, so square, so solid after the phantom imaginations of the house that she had left, that the sight of him was a step straight into the heart of comfort and reassurance.

"I was just coming," he said, looking at her, "to leave a note for Miss Cardinal—from my father—"

"She's in," Maggie said.

"Oh, it wasn't to bother her—only to leave the note. About some meeting, I think."

"We're just going out. This is my uncle—Mr. Warlock."

The two men shook hands.

Mathew Cardinal smiled. His eyes closed, his greeting had an urgency in it as though he had suddenly made some discovery that gratified and amused him. "Very glad to meet you—very glad, indeed, sir. Any friend of my niece's. I know your father, sir; know him and admire him."

They all turned down the street together. Uncle Mathew talked, and then, quite suddenly, stopping under a lamp-post as though within the circle of light his charm were stronger, he said:

"I suppose, Mr. Warlock, you wouldn't do me the great, the extreme, honour of dining with myself and my niece at my humble little inn to-night? A little sudden—I hope you'll forgive the discourtesy—but knowing your father—"

Martin looked straight into Maggie's eyes.

"Oh, please do!" she said, her heart beating, as it seemed, against her eyes so that she dropped them.

"Well—" he hesitated. "It's very good of you, Mr. Cardinal—very kind. As a matter of fact I was going to dine alone to-night—just a chop, you know, somewhere—if it's really not inconvenient I'll be delighted—"

They walked on together.

As they passed into Garrick Street, she knew that she had never in all her life been so glad to be with any one, that she had never so completely trusted any one, that she would like to be with him often, to look after him, perhaps, and to be looked after by him.

Her feeling for him was almost sexless, because she had never thought, as most girls do, of love and the intrigue and coquetry of love. She was so simple as to be shameless, and at once, if he had asked her then in the street to marry him she would have said yes without hesitation or fear, or any analysis. She would like to look after him as well as herself—there were things she was sure that she could do for him—and she would be no burden to him because she intended, in any case, to lead her own life. She would simply lead it with a companion instead of without one.

He must have felt as he walked with her this trust and simplicity. She was certainly the most extraordinary girl whom he had ever met, and he'd met a number ...

He could believe every word she said; he had never known any one so direct and simple and honest, and yet with that she was not a fool, as most honest girls were. No, she was not a fool. He would have given anything to be as sure of himself ...

She was plain—but then was she? As they passed beneath the light of a street lamp his heart gave a sudden beat. Her face was so GOOD, her eyes so true, her mouth so strong. She was like a boy, rather—and, of course, she was dressed badly. But he wanted to look after her. He was sure that she knew so little of the world and would be so easily deceived ...But who was he to look after any one?

He knew that she would trust him utterly, and trust him not only because she was ignorant of the world, but also because she was herself so true. At the thought of this trust his heart suddenly warmed, partly with shame and partly with pride.

They walked very happily along laughing and talking. They turned into Henrietta Street, misty with lamps that were dim in a thin evening fog, and at the corner of the street, facing the Square, was Uncle Mathew's hotel. It was a place for the use, in the main, of commercial gentlemen, and it was said by eager searchers after local colour, to have retained a great deal of the Dickens spirit. In the hall there was a stout gentleman with a red nose, a soiled waiter, a desolate palm and a large-bosomed lady all rings and black silk, in a kind of wooden cage. Down the stairs came a dim vapour that smelt of beef, whisky and tobacco, and in the distance was the regular click of billiard-balls and the brazen muffled tones of a gramophone. Uncle Mathew seemed perfectly at home here, and it was strange to Maggie that he should be so nervous with Aunt Anne, his own sister, when he could be so happily familiar with the powdered lady in the black silk.

"We're to have dinner in a private room upstairs," said Uncle Mathew in a voice that was casual and at the same time important. He led the way up the stairs.

Maggie had read in some old bound volume at home a very gruesome account of the "Life and Misdeeds of Mr. Palmer, the Rugeley Poisoner." The impression that still remained with her was of a man standing in the shadowy hall of just such an hotel as this, and pouring poison into a glass which he held up against the light. This picture had been vividly with her during her childhood, and she felt that this must have been the very hotel where those fearful deeds occurred, and that the ghost of Mr. Palmer's friend must, at this very moment, be writhing in an upstairs bedroom—"writhing," as she so fearfully remembered, bent "like a hoop."

However, these reminiscences did not in the least terrify her; she welcomed their definite outlines in contrast with the shadowy possibilities of her aunts' house. And she had Martin Warlock ... She had never been so happy in all her life.

A dismal little waiter with a very soiled shirt and a black tie under his ear, guided them down into a dark passage and flung open the door of a sitting-room. This room was dark and sizzling with strange noises; a gas-jet burning low was hissing, some papers rustled in the breeze from the half-opened window, and a fire, overburdened with the weight of black coal, made frantic little spurts of resistance.

A white cloth was laid on the table, and there were glasses and knives and forks. A highly-coloured portrait of her late Majesty Queen Victoria confronted a long-legged horse desperately winning a race in which he had apparently no competitors. There was a wall-paper of imitation marble and a broken-down book-case with some torn paper editions languishing upon it. Beyond the open window there was a purple haze and a yellow mist—also a bell rang and carts rattled over the cobbles. The waiter shut out these sights and sounds, gave the tablecloth a stroke with his dirty hand, and left the room.

They continued their cheerful conversation, Martin laughing at nothing at all, and Maggie smiling, and Uncle Mathew stroking his mouth and sharpening his eyes and standing, in his uneasy fashion, first on one leg and then on the other. Maggie realised that her uncle was trying to be most especially pleasant to young Warlock. She wondered why; she also remembered what he had said to her about Martin's father ... No, he had changed. She could not follow his motives as she had once been able to do. Then he had simply been a foolish, drunken, but kindly-intentioned old man.

Then Mr. Warlock on his side seemed to like her uncle. That was an extraordinary thing. Or was he only being friendly because he was happy? No, she remembered his face as he had joined them that evening. He had not been happy then. She liked him the more because she knew that he needed help ... The meal, produced at last by the poor little waiter, was very merry. The food was not wonderful—the thick pea-soup was cold, the sole bones and skin, the roast beef tepid and the apple-tart heavy. The men drank whiskies and sodas, and Maggie noticed that her uncle drank very little. And then (with apologies to Maggie) they smoked cigars, and she sat before the dismal fire in an old armchair with a hole in it.

Martin Warlock talked in a most delightful way about his travels, and Uncle Mathew asked him questions that were not, after all, so stupid. What had happened to him? Had Maggie always undervalued him, or was it that he was sober now and clear-headed? His fat round thighs seemed stronger, his hands seemed cleaner, the veins in his face were not so purple. She remembered the night when he had come into her room. She had been able to manage him then. Would she be able to manage him now?

After dinner he grew very restless. His eyes wandered to the door, then to his watch, then to his companions; he smiled uneasily, pulling his moustache; then—jumping to his feet, tried to speak with an easy self-confidence.

"I must leave you for a quarter of an hour ... A matter of business, only in this hotel. Downstairs. Yes. A friend of mine and a little matter. Urgent. I'm sure you'll forgive me."

For a moment Maggie was frightened. She was here in a strange hotel in a strange room with a man whom she scarcely knew. Then she looked up into young Warlock's face and was reassured. She could trust him.

He stood with his arm on the shabby, dusty mantelpiece, looking down upon her with his good-natured kindly smile, so kindly that she felt that he was younger than she and needed protection in a world that was filled with designing Uncle Mathews and mysterious Aunt Annes and horrible Miss Warlocks.

He, on his side, as he looked down at her, was surprised at his own excitement. His heart was beating, his hand trembling—before this plain, ordinary, unattractive girl! Unattractive physically—but not uninteresting. One of the most interesting human beings whom he had ever met, simply because she was utterly unlike any one else. He felt shame before her, because he knew that she would believe every word that he said. In that she was simple, but "he would be bothered if she was simple in anything else." She had made up her mind—he knew it as well as though she had told him—to trust him absolutely, and he knew well enough how little he was to be trusted. And because of that faith and because of that trust he felt that she was more reliable than he could have believed that changing fickle human being would ever be. How secure he might feel with her!

Then, as he thought that, he realised how troubled he was about his life at home during the last weeks. Amy hated him, his mother hid herself from him, and his father's love frightened him. Already he had found himself telling lies to avoid the chapel services and the meetings with Thurston and the rest. His father's love for him had something terrible in it, and, although he returned it, he could not live up to that fire and heat.

No; he saw that he would not be able to remain for long at home. On the other hand, go back to the old wandering life he would not. He had had enough of that and its rotten carelessness and shabbiness. What a girl this would be to settle down with somewhere! So strange that she would be always interesting, so faithful that she would be always there! Nor was he entirely selfish. Her childishness, her ignorance, appealed to him for protection. She had no one but those old aunts to care for her, she was poor and rebellious and ignorant. Warlock was kind-hearted beyond the normal charity of man—much of his weakness came from that very kindness.

As he saw which way he was going he tried to pull himself back. He could not protect her—he had the best of reasons for knowing why. He could do her nothing but harm ... and yet he went on.

He took a chair close to her and sat down. He, who had known in his time many women, could see how happy she was. That happiness excited him. Suddenly he held her hand. She did not remove it.

"Look here," he began, and he was surprised at the hoarseness of his voice, "your uncle will be back in a moment, and we never have a chance of being alone. I've wanted to talk to you ever since I first saw you."

He felt her hand move in his. That stir was so helpless that he suddenly determined to be honest.

"I think you'll trust me, won't you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Well, you mustn't," he went on hurriedly, his eyes on the door. "I'm not worse, I suppose, than other men, but all the same I'm not to be trusted. And when I say I'm not to be trusted I mean that I myself don't know whether I'll keep my word from one minute to another. I'm sure you don't know very much about men. I could see it at once from the way you spoke."

She looked up, her clear, unconfused, unquestioning eyes facing him.

"I knew my father well," she said. "We were quite alone for years together. And then Uncle Mathew—"

"Oh, your father, your uncle," he answered quickly. "They don't count. What I mean is that you mustn't think men are scoundrels just because they act badly. I swear that nine out of ten of them never mean to do any harm."

"And they think they're speaking the truth at the time. But anything 'does' for them and then they're in a mess, and all they think about is how to get out of it. Then it's every man for himself ..."

Maggie shook her head.

"I've always known that I'd have to manage for myself," she said. "I've never expected any one to do anything for me, so I'm not likely to be disappointed now."

He moved a little closer to her and held her hand more firmly; even as he did so something in his heart reproached him, but now the reproach was very far away, like an echo of some earlier voice.

"Do you know you're a wonderful girl?" he said. "I knew you were from the first moment I saw you. You're the most independent person I've ever known. You can't guess how I admire that! And all the same you're not happy, are you? You want to get out of it, don't you?"

She thought for a little while before she nodded her head.

"I suppose as a fact." she said, "I do. If you want to know—and you mustn't tell anybody—I've posted a letter to a lady whom I met once who told me if ever I wanted anything to write to her. I've asked her for some work. I've got three hundred pounds of my own. It isn't very much, I know, but I could start on it ... I don't want to do wrong to my aunts, who are very kind to me, but I'm not happy there. It wouldn't be true to say I'm happy. You see," she dropped her voice a little, "they want to make me religious, and I've had so much of that with father already. I feel as though they were pressing me into it somehow, and that I should wake up one morning and find I should never escape again. There's so much goes on that I don't understand. And it isn't only the chapel. Aunt Anne's very quiet, but she makes you feel quite helpless sometimes. And perhaps one will get more and more helpless the longer one stays. I don't want to be helpless ever—nor religious!" she ended.

"Why, that's just my position," he continued eagerly. "I came home as happily as anything. I'd almost forgotten all that had been when I was a boy, how I was baptized and thought I belonged to God and was so proud and stuck up. That all seems nonsense when you're roughing it with other men who think about nothing but the day's work. Then I came home meaning to settle down. I wanted to see my governor too. I've always cared for him more than any one else in the world ... but I tell you now I simply don't know what's going on at home. They want to catch me in a trap. That's what it feels like. To make me what I was as a kid. It's strange, but there's more in it than you'd think. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've thought of my young days since I've been home. It's as though some one was always shoving them up in front of my face. All I want, you know, is to be jolly. To let other people alone and be let alone myself. I wouldn't do any one any harm in the world—I wouldn't really. But it's as though father wanted me to believe all the things he believes, so that he could believe them more himself. Perhaps it's the same with your aunt ..." Then he added, "But they're sick people. That explains a lot."

"Sick?" asked Maggie.

"Yes. My governor's got heart—awfully bad. He might go off at any moment if he had a shock. And your aunt—don't you know?"

"No," said Maggie.

"Cancer. They all say so. I thought you'd have known."

"Oh!" Maggie drew in her breath. She shuddered. "Poor Aunt Anne! Oh, poor Aunt Anne! I didn't know."

She felt a sudden rush of confused emotion. A love for her aunt, desire to help her, and at the same time shrinking as though she saw the whole house which had been, from the first, unhappy to her was now diseased and evil and rotten. The hot life in her body told her against her moral will that she must escape, and her soul, moving in her and speaking to her, told her that now, more than ever, she must stay.

"Oh, poor, poor Aunt Anne," she said again.

He moved and put his arm around her. He had meant it simply as a movement of sympathy and protection, but when he felt the warmth of her body against his, when he realised how she went to him at once with the confidence and simplicity of a child, when he felt the hot irregular beat of her heart, his own heart leapt, his arm was strengthened like a barrier of iron against the world.

He had one moment of desperate resistance, a voice of protest calling to him far, far away. His hand touched her neck; he raised her face to his and kissed her, once gently, kindly, then, passionately again and again.

She shivered a little, as though surrendering something to him, then lay quite still in his arms.

"Maggie! Maggie!" he whispered.

Then she raised her head and herself kissed him.

There was a noise on the door. They separated; the door opened and in the sudden light a figure was visible holding a glass.

For a blind instant Maggie, returning from her other world, thought it the figure of Mr. Palmer of Rugeley.

It was, of course, Uncle Mathew.



CHAPTER IV

MR. CRASHAW

Uncle Mathew saw Maggie back to her door, kissed her and left her. On their way home he did not once mention Martin Warlock to her.

He left her as he heard the bolt turn in the door, hurrying away as though he did not want to be seen. Maggie went in to find old Martha with her crabbed face watching her sourly. But she did not care, nothing could touch her now. Even the old woman, cross with waiting by the fading kitchen fire, noticed the light in the girl's eyes. She had always thought the girl hard and ungracious, but now that face was soft, and the mouth smiling over its secret thoughts, and the eyes sleepy with happiness.

Maggie could have said: "I'm wild with joy, Martha. I know what love is. I had never thought that it could be like this. Be kind to me because it's the greatest night of my life."

Martha said: "There's some milk hotted for you, Miss, and some biscuits. There on the table by the stairs."

"Oh, I don't want anything, Martha, thank you!"

"Your aunt said you was to have it."

Maggie drank it down, Martha watching her. Then she went upstairs softly, as though her joy might awaken the whole house. She lay wide-eyed on her bed for hours, then fell into a heavy sleep, deep, without dreams.

When, in the quieter light of the morning, she considered the event, she had no doubts nor hesitations. She loved Martin and Martin loved her. Soon Martin would marry her and they would go away. Her aunt would be sorry of course, and his father, perhaps, would be angry, but the sorrow and anger would be only for a little while. Then Martin and she would live happily together always—happily because they were both sensible people, and her own standard of fidelity and trust was, she supposed, also his. She did not think very deeply about what he had said to her; it only meant that he wanted to escape from his family, a desire in which she could completely sympathise. She had loved him, as she now saw, from the first moment of meeting, and she would love him always. She would never be alone again, and although Martin had told her that he was weak, and she knew something about men, she was aware that their love for one another would be a thing apart, constant, unfaltering, eternal. She had read no modern fiction; she knew nothing about psychology: she was absolutely happy ...

And then in that very first day she discovered that life was not quite so simple. In the first place, she wanted Martin desperately and he did not come; and although she had at once a thousand sensible reasons for the impossibility of his coming, nevertheless strange new troubles and suspicions that she had never known before rose in her heart. She had only kissed him once; he had only held her in his arms for a few moments ...She waited, looking from behind the drawing-room curtains out into the street. How could he let the whole day go by? He was prevented, perhaps, by that horrible sister of his. When the dusk came and the muffin-man went ringing his bell down the street she felt exhausted as though she had been running for miles ...

Then with sudden guilty realisation of the absorption that had held her all day she wondered how much her aunt had noticed.

During the afternoon when she had been watching the streets from behind the curtain Aunt Elizabeth had sat sewing, Thomas the cat lumped before the fire, the whole room bathed in afternoon silence. Maggie had watched as though hypnotized by the street itself, marking the long squares of light, the pools of shadow, the lamp-posts, the public-house at the corner, the little grocer's shop with cases of oranges piled outside the door, the windows on the second floor of the dressmaker's, through which you could see a dummy-figure and a young woman with a pale face and shiny black hair, who came and glanced out once and again, as though to reassure herself that the gay world was still there.

The people, the horses and carts, the cabs went on their way. Often it seemed that this figure must be Martin's—now this—now this ... And on every occasion Maggie's heart rose in her breast, hammered at her eyes, then sank again. Over and over she told to herself every incident of yesterday's meeting. Always it ended in that same wonderful climax when she was caught to his breast and felt his hand at her neck and then his mouth upon hers. She could still feel against her skin the rough warm stuff of his coat and the soft roughness of his cheek and the stiff roughness of his hair. She could still feel how his mouth had just touched hers and then suddenly gripped it as though it would never let it go; then she had been absorbed by him, into his very heart, so that still now she felt as though with his strong arms and his hard firm body he was around her and about her.

Oh, she loved him! she loved him! but why did he not come? Had he been able only to pass down the street and smile up to her window as he went that would have been something. It would at least have reassured her that yesterday was not a dream, an invention, and that he was still there and thought of her and cared for her ...

She pulled herself together. At the sound of the muffin-man's bell she came back into her proper world. She would be patient; as she had once resolved outside Borhedden Farm, so now she swore that she would owe nothing to any man.

If she should love Martin Warlock it would not be for anything that she expected to get from him, but only for the love that she had it in her to give. If good came of it, well, if not, she was still her own master.

But more than ever now was it impossible to be open with her aunts. How strange it was that from the very beginning there had been concealments between Aunt Anne and herself. Perhaps if they had been open to one another at the first all would have been well. Now it was too late.

Tea came in, and, with tea, Aunt Anne. It was the first time that day that Maggie had seen her, and now, conscious of the news that Martin had given her, she felt a movement of sympathy, of pity and affection. Aunt Anne had been in her room all day, and she seemed as she walked slowly to the fire to be of a finer pallor, a more slender body than ever. Maggie felt as though she could see the firelight through her body, and with that came also the conviction that Aunt Anne knew everything, knew about Martin and the posted letter and the thoughts of escape. Maggie herself was tired with the trial of her waiting day, she was exhausted and was beating, with all her resolve, against a disappointment that hammered with a thundering noise, somewhere far away in the recesses of her soul. So they all drew around the fire and had their tea.

Aunt Anne, leaning back in her chair, her beautiful hands stretched out on the arms, a fine white shawl spread on her knees, asked Maggie about last night.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself, dear." "Very much, Aunt Anne. Uncle Mathew was very kind."

"What did you do?"

Maggie flushed. It was deceit and lies now all the time, and oh! how she hated lies! But she went on:

"Do you know, Aunt Anne, I think Uncle Mathew is so changed. He's younger and everything. He talked quite differently last night, about his business and all that he's doing. He's got his money in malt now, he says."

"Whose money?" asked Aunt Anne.

"His own, he says. I never knew he had any. But he says yes, it's in malt. It's not a nice hotel, though, where he lives."

"Not nice, dear?"

"No, I didn't like it. But it's only for men really of course."

"I think he'd better take you somewhere else next time. I'll speak to him. By the way, Maggie dear, Martha tells me you went out yesterday afternoon all alone—into the Strand. I think it would be better if you were to tell us."

Maggie's cheeks were hot. She set back her shoulders.

"How does Martha know?" she asked quickly. "I only went for a moment—only for a little walk. But I'm grown up, Aunt Anne. Surely I can go out by myself if ..." she stopped, looking away from them into the fire.

"It isn't that, dear," Aunt Anne said very gently. "It's only that you've been so little a time in London that you can't know your way about yet. And London's a strange place. It might be unpleasant for you alone. I'd rather that you told us first."

Then Maggie delivered her challenge.

"But, aunt, I won't be always here. I'm going off to earn my living soon, aren't I?"

Aunt Elizabeth drew her breath in sharply. Aunt Anne said quietly:

"You are free, dear, quite free. But whilst I am not quite myself—I don't want to be selfish, dear—but you are a great comfort to us, and when I am stronger certainly you shall go ... even now if you wish, of course ... but my illness."

Even as she spoke—and it was the first time that she had ever mentioned her illness—she caught at her breast and pressed her hand there as though she were in great pain. Maggie sprang to her side. She caught the girl's hand with hers and held her. Maggie could feel her swift agonized breathing. Then with a little sigh the moment had passed. Maggie still knelt there looking up into her aunt's face.

Martha's voice was heard at the door.

"Mr. Martin Warlock, Miss. Could you see him? ..."

"Yes, Martha," said Aunt Anne, her voice calm and controlled. "Ask him to come up."

She had abandoned so completely any idea that he might still come that she could not now feel that it was he. She withdrew from her aunt's side and stood in the shadow against the wall.

Although her heart beat wildly her whole mind was bent upon composure, upon showing nothing to her aunts, and on behaving to him as though she scarcely knew him, but so soon as he entered the room some voice cried in her: "He is mine! He is mine!" She did not stir from her wall, but her eyes fastened upon him and then did not move. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday; his tie was different, it had been black and now it was dark blue. He looked quiet and self-possessed and at his ease. His rough stiff hair was carelessly brushed as always; good-humour shone from his eyes, he smiled, his walk had the sturdy broad strength of a man who is absolutely sure of himself but is not conceited. He seemed to have no trouble in the world.

He greeted the aunts, then shook hands with Maggie. He gave her one glance and she, suddenly feeling that that glance had not the things in it that she had wanted, was frightened, her confidence left her, she felt that if she did not have a word alone with him she would die.

He sat down near Aunt Anne.

"No, thank you, I won't have any tea," he said. "We're dining very early to-night because Father and Amy have a meeting right away over Golders Green way somewhere. It's really on a message from him that I came."

He did not look at her, placed like a square shadow against the dusky wall. He sat, leaning forward a little, his red-brown hand on his knee, his leg bulging under the cloth of his trouser, his neck struggling behind his collar—but his smile was pleasant and easy, he seemed perfectly at home.

"My father wonders whether you will mind some friends of Miss Avies sitting with you in your pew to-morrow evening. She has especially asked—two of them ... ladies, I believe. But it seems that there will be something of a crowd, and as your pew is always half empty— He would not have asked except that there seems nowhere else."

Aunt Anne graciously assented.

"But, of course, Mr. Warlock, Maggie will be going with us, but still there will be room. Mr. Crashaw is going to speak after all, I hear. I was afraid that he would have been too ill."

Martin laughed. "He is staying with us, you know, and already he is preparing himself. He's about the oldest human being I've ever seen. He must be a hundred."

"He's a great saint," said Aunt Anne.

"He's always in a terrible temper though," said Martin. "He mutters to himself—and he eats nothing. His room is next to mine, and he walked up and down all night talking. I don't know how he keeps alive."

Perhaps Aunt Anne thought Martin's tone irreverent. She relapsed into herself and seemed suddenly, with a spiritual wave of the hand, to have dismissed the whole company.

Martin took his leave. He barely touched Maggie's hand, but his eyes leapt upon hers with all the fire of a greeting too long delayed. His lips did not move, but she heard the whisper "Soon!" Then he was gone.

Soon! She felt as though she could not wait another instant but must immediately run after him, follow him into the street, and make clear his plans both for himself and her.

Then, continuing her struggle of the long day, she beat into herself endurance; she was in a new world, in a world with roads and cities, mountains, rivers, seas and forests that had to be traversed by her, to be learnt and remembered and conquered, and for the success of this she must have her own spirit absolutely aloof and firm and brave. She loved him. That must be enough for her, and meanwhile she need not lose her common sense and vision of everyday life ...But meanwhile it hurt. She was now twice as lonely as she had been before because she did not know what he intended to do, and always with her now there was something strange and unknown that might at any moment be stronger than she.

But by next morning she had conquered herself. She would see him at Chapel that night and perhaps have a word with him, and so already she had arrived at her now lover's calendar of dates and seasons. There was the time before she would see him and the time after—no other time than that.

The trouble that weighed upon her most heavily was her deceitfulness to the aunts. Fifty times that day she was on the edge of speaking and telling them all, but she was held back by the vagueness of her relations to Martin. Were they engaged? Did he even love her? He had only kissed her. He had said nothing. No, she must wait, but with this definite sense of her wickedness weighing upon her—not wickedness to herself, for that she cared nothing, but wickedness to them—she tried, on this day, to be a pattern member of the household, going softly everywhere that she was told, closing doors behind her, being punctual and careful. Unhappily it was a day of misfortune, it was one of Aunt Anne's more worldly hours and she thought that she would spend it in training Maggie. Very good—but Maggie dropped a glass into which flowers were to have been put, she shook her pen when she was addressing some envelopes so that some drops of ink were scattered upon the carpet, and, in her haste to be punctual, she banged her bedroom door so loudly that Aunt Anne was waked from her afternoon nap.

A scene followed. Aunt Anne showed herself very human, like any other aunt justly exasperated by any other niece.

"I sometimes despair of you, Maggie. You will not think of others. I don't wish to be hard or unjust, but selfishness is the name of your greatest weakness."

Maggie, standing with her hands behind her, a spot of ink on her nose and her short hair ruffled, was hard and unrepentant.

"You must send me away," she said; "I'm not a success here. You don't like me."

Aunt Anne looked at Maggie with eyes that were clear and cold like deep unfriendly waters. "You mustn't say that. We love you, but you have very much to learn. To-night I shall speak to Miss Avies and arrange that you go to have a talk with her sometimes. She is a wise woman who knows many things. My sister and I are not strong enough to deal with you, and we are weakened perhaps by our love for you."

"I don't want to go to-night," Maggie said, then she burst out: "Oh, can't I lead an ordinary life like other girls—be free and find things out for myself, not only go by what older people tell me—earn my living and be free? I've never lived an ordinary life. Life with Father wasn't fair, and now—"

Aunt Anne put out her arm and drew her towards her. "Poor Maggie ... Aren't you unfair to us? Do you suppose really that we don't love you? Do you think that I don't understand? You shall be free, afterwards, if you wish—perfectly free—but you must have the opportunity of learning what this life is first, what the love of God is, what the companionship of Him is. If after you have seen you still reject it, we will not try to keep you. But it is God's will that you stay with us for a time."

"How do you know that it is God's will?" asked Maggie, melted nevertheless, as she always was by any sign of affection.

"He has told me," Aunt Anne answered, and then closed her eyes.

Maggie went away with a sensation of being tracked by some stealthy mysterious force that was creeping ever closer and closer upon her, that she could only feel but not see. For instance, she might have said that she would not go to Chapel to-night, and she might have taken her stand upon that. And yet she could not say that. Of course she must go because she must see Martin, but even if she had known that he would not be there she would have gone. Was it curiosity? Was it reminiscence? Was it superstition? Was it cowardice? Was it loneliness? All these things, perhaps, and yet something more than they ...

All through the afternoon of the lovely November day she anticipated that evening's services as though it were in some way to be a climax. She knew that it was to be for all of them an especial affair. She had heard during the last days much discussion of old Mr. Crashaw. He was an old man with, apparently, a wonderful history of conversions behind him. His conversions had been, it seemed, of the forcible kind, seizing people by the neck and shoving them in; he was a fierce and militant kind of saint; he believed, it seemed, in damnation and eternal hell fire, and could make you believe in them too; his accent was on the tortures rather than the triumphs of religion.

But Maggie had other thoughts, in this, outside Mr. Crashaw. She had never lost the force of that first meeting with Mr. Warlock; she had avoided him simply because she was afraid lest he should influence her too much, but now after her friendship with Martin she felt that she could never meet old Mr. Warlock frankly again. What he would say to her if he knew that she meant to take his son away from him she knew well enough. On every side there was trouble and difficulty. She could not see a friend anywhere unless it was Caroline, whom she did not completely trust, and Mr. Magnus, whom her deception of her aunt would, she knew, most deeply distress. Meanwhile she was being pushed forward more and more into the especial religious atmosphere of the house, the Chapel and the Chapel sect. Of no use to tell herself that this was only a tiny fragment of the whole world, that there, only five yards away from her, in the Strand, was a life that swept past the Chapel and its worshippers with the utmost, completest indifference. She had always this feeling that she was caught, that she could only escape by a desperate violent effort that would hurt others and perhaps be, for herself, a lasting reproach. She wanted so simple a thing ... to be always with Martin, working, with all this confusing, baffling, mysterious religion behind her; this simple thing seemed incredibly difficult of attainment.

Nevertheless, when they started that evening for the Chapel she felt, in spite of herself, a strange almost pleasurable excitement. There was, in that plain, ugly building some force that could not be denied. Was it the force of the worshippers' belief? Was it the force of some outside power that watched ironically the efforts of those poor human beings to discover it? Was it the love of a father for his children? No, there was very little love in this creed—no more than there had been in her father's creed before. As she walked along between her aunts her brain was a curious jumble of religion, Martin, and how she was ever going to learn to be tidy and punctual.

"Well, I won't care," was the resolution with which she always brought to an end her discussions and misgivings. "I'm myself. Nobody can touch me unless I let them."

It was a most lovely evening, very pale and clear with an orange light in the sky like the reflection of some far distant towering fire. The air was still and the rumble of the town scarcely penetrated into their street; they could hear the ugly voice of the little Chapel bell jangling in the heart of the houses, there was a scent of chrysanthemums from somewhere and a very faint suggestion of snow—even before they reached the Chapel door a few flakes lazily began to fall.

Maggie was thinking now only of Martin. There was a gas-lamp already lighted in the Chapel doorway, and this blinded her eyes. She had hoped that he would be there, waiting, so that he might have a word with her before they went in, but when they were all gathered together under the porch she saw with a throb of disappointment that he was not there. She saw no one whom she knew, but it struck her at once that here was a gathering quite different from that of the first time that she had come to the Chapel. There seemed to be more of the servant class; rather they were older women with serious rapt expressions and very silent. There were men too, to-night, four or five gathered together inside the passage, standing gravely, without a word, not moving, like statues. Maggie was frightened. She felt like a spy in an enemy's camp, and a spy waiting for an inevitable detection, with no hope of securing any news. As she went up the aisle behind her aunts her eyes searched for Martin. She could not see him. Their seat was close to the front, and already seated in it were the austere Miss Avies and two lady friends.

Maggie was maliciously pleased to observe that Miss Avies had not expected these additions to her number and was now in danger of an uncomfortable squashing; there was, indeed, a polite little struggle between Miss Avies and Aunt Anne as to who should have the corner with a wooden arm upon which to rest. Miss Avies' two friends, huddled and frightened like fledglings suddenly surprised by a cuckoo, stirred Maggie's sympathy. She disliked Miss Avies from the very first moment. Miss Avies had a pale, thin, pointed face with no eyebrows, grey eyes dim and short-sighted, and fair colourless hair brushed straight back under a hard, ugly black hat.

At the same time she was nervous, emotional, restless; something about her was always moving—her lips, her hands, her shoulders, her eyes. She was fierce and hostile and ineffectual, one felt, so long as she was by herself. Maggie did not, of course, notice all this at the time, but in after years she always looked back on the pale, thin, highly-strung Miss Avies as the motive of most of the events that followed this particular evening. It was as though she felt that Miss Avies' weight, not enough in itself to effect any result, when thrown into the balance just turned everything in one direction. It had that result, at any rate, upon Maggie herself.

She soon lost, however, consideration of Miss Avies in the wider observation of the Chapel and its congregation. It was, as it had been on the occasion of her first visit to it, stuffy, smelling of gas and brick and painted wood, ugly in its bareness and unresponsiveness—and, nevertheless, exciting. The interior of the building had the air of one who has watched some most unusual happenings and expects very shortly to watch them again. Even the harmonium seemed to prick up its wooden ears in anticipation. And to-night the congregation thrilled also with breathless expectation. As Maggie looked round upon them she could see that they were throbbing with the anticipation of some almost sensuous delight. By now they had filled the Chapel to its utmost limits, but there was not one human being there who did not seem to have the appearance of having been especially selected from other less interesting human beings. It was not that the forces that surrounded her were especially interesting, but she felt that all of them had taken on some especial dramatic character from the occasion. Such personalities as Aunt Anne and Miss Avies were in any case vivid and dramatic, but to-night Aunt Elizabeth and the placidly rotund Mrs. Smith, who was sitting in the front row with her mouth open, and simple little Miss Pyncheon, Aunt Anne's friend, were remarkable and exceptional.

Then suddenly Maggie caught sight of Martin. He was sitting in the extreme right next the wall; his ill-tempered sister was next to him. Maggie could only see his head and shoulders, but she realised at once that he had been, for a long time, trying to catch her eye. He smiled at her an intimate peculiar smile that sent the blood flooding to her face and made her heart beat with happiness. At the moment of her smiling she realised that Miss Avies' dim eye was upon her. What right had Miss Avies to watch over her? She set back her shoulders, sat up stiffly, and tried to look as old as she might—that was not, unhappily, very old. That smile exchanged with Martin had made her happy for ever. Miss Avies was of less than no importance at all ...

The little bell ceased its jangling, the harmonium began a quavering prelude, and from a door at the back, behind the little platform and desk, three men entered: first Mr. Thurston; then a little crooked man who must, Maggie knew, be Mr. Crashaw; finally, in magnificent contrast, Mr. Warlock. A quiver of emotion passed over the Chapel—there was then a hushed expectant pause.

"Brothers and sisters, let us pray," said Mr. Thurston.

Maggie had not seen him before; she wondered what strange chance had led him and Mr. Warlock to work together. In every movement of the body, in every tone of the voice, Thurston showed the professional actor—his thoughts were all upon himself and the effect that he was making. So calculated was he in his attitude that his eyes betrayed him, having in their gleam other thoughts, other intentions very far away from his immediate business in the Chapel. Maggie, watching him, wondered what those thoughts were. His voice was ugly, as were all his movements; his sharp actor's face, with the long rather dirty black hair, the hooked nose, the long dirty fingers which moved in and out as though they worked of themselves—all these things were false and unmoving. But behind his harsh voice, gross accent and melodramatic tone there was some power, the power of a man ambitious, ruthless, scornful, self-confident. He did not care a snap of his fingers for his congregation, he laughed at their beliefs, he made use of their credulity.

"Oh God," he prayed, his voice now shrill and quivering and just out of tune, so that it jarred every nerve in Maggie's body, "Thou seest what we are, miserable sinners not worthy of Thy care or goodness, sunk deep in the mire of evil living and evil 'abits, nevertheless, oh God, we, knowing Thy loving 'eart towards Thy sinful servants, do pray Thee that Thou wilt give us Thy blessing before we leave this Thy 'ouse this night; a new contrite 'eart is what we beg of Thee, that we may go out into this evil world taught by Thee to search out our ways and improve our thoughts, caring for nothing but Thee, following in Thy footsteps and making ready for Thy immediate Coming, which will be in Thine own good time and according to Thy will."

"This we pray for the sake of Thy dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins upon the bloody Cross."

"Amen."

From between her hands Maggie watched those two strange eyes wandering about the Chapel, picking up here a person, there a person, wondering over this, wondering over that, and always, in the end, concerned not about these things at all but about some other more ultimate loneliness, fear or expectation, something that set him apart and made him, as are all men in the final recesses of their spirit, as lonely as though he were by himself on a desert island.

The thrill of anticipation faded through the Chapel as Thurston continued his prayer. He had not to-night, at any rate, power over his audience—the thing that they were waiting for was something that he could not satisfy. A restlessness was abroad; coughing broke out once, twice, then everywhere; chairs creaked, sighs could be heard, some one moved to the door. Thurston seemed to realise his failure; with a sudden snap of impatience he brought prayer to an end and rose to his feet.

"We will sing," he said, "No. 341. 'Bathed in the blood of the Lamb.'"

The singing of the hymn roused the excitement of the congregation to even more than its earlier pitch. The tune was a moving one, beginning very softly, beseeching God to listen, then, more confident, rising to a high note of appeal:

By all Thy sores and bloody pain Come down and heal our sins again;

falling, after that, to a note of confidence and security in the last refrain:

By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee—

In spite of the crudity of the words and the simplicity of the tune Maggie had tears in her eyes. The whole Chapel was singing now, singing as though the sins of the world could be redeemed only by the force and power of this especial moment. Maggie was caught up with the rest. She found herself singing parts of the second verse, then in the third she was carried away, had forgotten herself, her surroundings, even Martin. There was something real in this, something beyond the ugliness of the Chapel and its congregation. She remembered what Mr. Magnus had said: "If there's something of great value, don't think the less of it because the people, including yourself, who admire it, aren't worth very much. Why should they be?"

She looked for a moment at Aunt Anne and saw her in an ecstasy, singing in her cracked tuneless voice, a smile about her lips and in her eyes, that gazed far, far beyond that Chapel. Maggie felt the approach of tears; she stopped singing—softly the refrain of the last verse came:

By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee!

The hymn over, Mr. Warlock read the Bible and then offered up a long extempore prayer. Strangely enough Mr. Warlock brought Maggie back to reality—strangely because, on an earlier occasion, he had done exactly the opposite. She realised at once that he was not happy to-night. Before, he had been himself caught up into the mood that held the Chapel; to-night he was fighting against a mood that was then outside him, a mood with which he did not sympathise and in which he could not believe.

She saw that he was unhappy, he spoke slowly, without the spontaneity and force that he had used before; once he made a long pause and you could feel throughout the Chapel a wave of nervous apprehension, as though every one were waiting to see whether he would fight his way through or not. Maggie felt her earlier emotion sentimental and false, it was as though he had said to her: "But that's not the true thing; that's cheap sham emotion. That's what they're trying to turn our great reality into. I'm fighting them and you must help me."

He was fighting them. She could imagine Mr. Thurston's scornful lip, hidden now by his hands. As Mr. Warlock went on with his dignified sentences, his restraint and his reverence, she could fancy how Thurston was saying to himself: "But what's the good of this? It's blood and thunder we want. The old feller's getting past his work. He must go."

But it was Mr. Warlock's reality of which she was afraid. As he continued his prayer she felt all her old terror return, that terror that she had known on the night her father died, during the hours that she had watched beside his dead body, at the moment when she had first arrived at the house in London, during her first visit to the Chapel, when she had said good-night to her aunt before going out with Uncle Mathew ... And now Mr. Warlock was sweeping her still farther inside. The intensity of his belief forced hers. There was something real in this power of God, and you could not finish with it simply by disregarding it. She felt, as she had felt so often lately, that some one was suddenly going to rise and demand some oath or promise from her that she, in her panic, would give her word and then would be caught for ever.

"By the love of Thy dear Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the promise of Thy second coming, we beseech Thee" ... finished Mr. Warlock.

During all this time the atmosphere of the Chapel had been growing hotter and hotter and closer and closer. It had always its air of being buried deep under ground, bathed in a kind of sunken heat that found its voice in the gas that hissed and sizzled overhead; near the door was a long rail on which coats might be hung, and now these garments could be seen, swaying a little to and fro, like corpses of condemned men.

The bare ugliness of the building with its stone walls, its rows of wooden seats, its grey windows, its iron-hung gas-lamps, its ugly desk and platform, was veiled now in a thin steaming heat that rose mistily above the heads of the kneeling congregation and seemed to hide strange shapes and shadows in its shifting depths. Every one was swimming in an uncertain world; the unreality grew with the heat. Maggie herself, at the end of Mr. Warlock's prayer, felt that her test of a real solid and unimaginative world was leaving her. She was expectant like the rest, as ready to believe anything at all.

Out of the mist rose Mr. Crashaw. This was a little old man with a crabbed face and a body that seemed to have endured infernal twistings in some Inquisitioner's torture-chamber. Maggie learnt afterwards that he had suffered for many years from intolerable rheumatism, but to-night the contortions and windings of the body with which he climbed up onto the platform, and then the grimaces that he made as his large round head peered over the top of the desk, might have struck any less solemn assemblage as farcical. He wore an old shiny black frock coat and a white rather grimy tie fastened in a sharp little bow. His face was lined like a map, his cheeks seamed and furrowed, his forehead a wilderness of marks, his scanty hair brushed straight back so that the top of his forehead seemed unnaturally shiny and bald; his hands, with which he clutched the side of his desk, were brown and wrinkled and grasping like a monkey's. His eyes were the eyes of a fanatic, but they were not steady and speculative like Warlock's or glowing and distant like Aunt Anne's, but rather angry and restless and pugnacious; they were the eyes of a madman, but of a madman who can yet calculate upon and arrange his position in the world. He was mad for his own purposes, and could, for these same purposes, bind his madness to its proper bounds.

He seemed to Maggie at first rather pathetic with his little twisted body and his large round head. Very soon it was emotions quite other than pity that she was feeling. She saw at once that he was a practised preacher, and she who had, with the exception of Mr. Warlock, never heard a fine preacher, was at once under the sway of one of the ablest and most dramatic orators of his time. His voice was sweet and clear, and seemed strange enough coming from that ugly and malevolent countenance. Only the head and the grasping hands could be seen, but sometimes the invisible body was driven with such force against the desk that it seemed that it must fling the thing over, down into the congregation.

"My brothers and sisters," he began, "I have come to-night to give you a warning, and this warning is given to you not as the expression of a personal opinion but as the declaration of an assumed fact. Disregard it or not as you please, but I shall have done my duty in pointing out to you the sure and certain meaning of my message."

"I, a sinner like the rest of you, live nevertheless in the fear of hell fire. Hell fire has become, I think, to many of the present generation a mockery and a derision. I come to tell you that it is no mockery, that it as surely lies there, a blazing furnace, in front of us as though we saw it with our own eyes ..."

With his own eyes he had surely seen it. They were fixed now in a frenzy of realisation upon some distant vision, and, with a shiver, the Chapel followed his gaze. It is easy enough to laugh at bare and conventional words stripped of the atmosphere and significance of their original surroundings. The merest baby in this twentieth century can laugh at the flames of hell and advance a string of easy arguments against the probability of any such melodramatic fulfilment of the commonplace and colourless lives that the majority of us lead, but Maggie was in no mood to laugh that night.

Before five minutes had passed she found herself shivering where she sat. The Chapel was convicted of Sin, and of Sin of no ordinary measure. The head that rested like a round ball on the surface of the desk thrust conviction into every heart: "You think that you may escape, you look at your neighbours, every one of you, and say, 'He is worse than I. I am safe,' but I tell you that not one man or woman here shall be secure unless he turn instantly now to God and beg for mercy..."

As he continued he did indeed bear the almost breathless urgency of one who has been sent on in advance to announce the imminence of some awful peril. No matter what the peril might be; simply through the Chapel there passed the breath of some coming danger. Impossible to watch him and not realise that here was a man who had seen something with his own eyes that had changed in a moment the very fabric of his life. Thurston might be a charlatan who played with the beliefs of his dupes, Warlock might be a mystic whose vision was in the future and not in the past—Crashaw knew.

He painted, quietly, without fine words but with assurance and conviction, his belief in the punishment of mankind. God was almost now upon the threshold of their house. He was at the very gates of their city, and with Him was coming a doom as sure and awful as the sentence of the earthly judge on his earthly victim.

"Punishment! Punishment! ... We have grown in this careless age to laugh at punishment. A future life? There is no future life. God? There is no God! Even were He to come upon us we could escape from Him. We could make a very good case for ourselves. This world is safe, secure, founded upon our markets, our treasuries, our laws and commandments, our conventions of decent behaviour, our police and our ministers. God cannot touch us. We are secure ... I tell you that at this very moment this earth in which you trust is trembling under you, at this instant everything in which you believed is undermined and is betraying you. You have been given your opportunity—you are refusing it—and God is upon you."

His voice changed suddenly to tones of a marvellous sweetness. He appealed, pleaded, implored. The ugliness of his face and body was forgotten, he was simply a voice issuing from space, sent to save a world.

"And we here—the few of us out of this huge city gathered together here—it is not too late for us. Let us surrender ourselves. Let us go to Him and say that we are His, that we await His coming and obey His law ... Brothers and sisters, I am as you are, weak and helpless and full of sin, but come to Him, come to Him, come to Him! ... There is help for us all, help and pity and love. Love such as none of us have ever known, love that cannot fail us and will be with us until eternity!"

He stepped out from behind the desk, stood before them all with his little stunted, twisted body, his arms held out towards them. There followed then an extraordinary scene—from all over the Chapel came sobs and cries. A man rose suddenly from the back of the building and cried aloud, "Lord, I believe! Help Thou mine unbelief." One of the women who had come with Miss Avies fell upon her knees and began to sob, crying hysterically: "Oh God, have mercy! God have mercy!" Women pressed up the two aisles, some of them falling on their knees there where they had stood, others coming to the front and kneeling there. Somewhere they began to sing the hymn that had already been sung that evening, a few voices at first, then more, then all singing together:

"By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee!"

Everywhere now women were crying, the Chapel was filled with voices, sobs, cries and prayers.

Mr. Crashaw stood there, motionless, his arms outstretched.

Maggie did not know what she felt. She seemed deprived of all sensation on one side, and, on the other, fear and excitement; both joy and disgust held her. She could not have told any one what her sensations were; she was trembling from head to foot as though with cold. But behind everything she had this terror, that at any moment she might be drawn forward to do something, to give some pledge that would bind her for all her life. She felt as though some power were urging her to this, and as though the Chapel and every one in it was conscious of the struggle.

What might have happened she would never know. She felt a touch on her sleeve, and, turning round, saw Aunt Anne's eyes looking up at her out of a face that was so white and the skin of it so tightly drawn that it was like the face of a dead woman.

"I'm in great pain, Maggie. I think you must take me home," she heard her aunt say.

Aunt Anne took her arm, they went out followed by Aunt Elizabeth. The fresh evening air that blew upon Maggie's forehead seemed suddenly to make of the Chapel a dim, incredible phantom; faintly from behind the closed door came the echo of the hymn. The street was absolutely still—no human being was in sight, only an old cab stationed close at hand waiting for a possible customer; into this they got. The pale, almost white, evening sky, with stars in sheets and squares and pools of fire, shone with the clear radiance of glass above them. Maggie could see the stars through the dirty windows of the cab.

They were quite silent all the way home. Aunt Anne sitting up very straight, motionless, her fingers still on Maggie's arm.

Inside the house there was Jane. She seemed at once to under-stand, and, with Aunt Elizabeth, led Aunt Anne up the dark stairs.

They disappeared, leaving Maggie alone in the hall, whose only sound was the ticking clock from the stairs and only light the dim lamp above the door.



CHAPTER V

THE CHOICE

She waited for some time alone in the hall listening for she knew not what. Her departure from the Chapel had been too abrupt to allow her in a moment to shake off the impression of it—above all, the impression of Mr. Crashaw standing there, his arms stretched out to her, his eyes burning her through and through with the urgent insistence of his discovery.

She was tired, her head ached horribly, she would have given everything at that moment for a friend who would care for her and protect her from her own wild fears. She did not know of what she was afraid, but she knew that she felt that she would rather do anything than spend the night in that house. And yet what could she do? How could she escape? She knew that she could not. Oh! if only Martin would come! Where was he? Why could he not carry her off that very night? Why did he not come?

She gazed desperately about her. Could she not leave the house there and then? But where should she go? What could she do without a friend in London? She stood there, clasping and unclasping her hands, looking up at the black stairs, listening for some sound from above, fancying a ghost in every darkening corner of the place.

Then her common sense reasserted itself. It was something, at any rate, that she was out of the Chapel, away from Mr. Crashaw's piercing eyes, Mr. Thurston's rasping voice, Mr. Warlock's reproachful melancholy. She felt this evening as though by struggling with all her strength she could shut the gates upon new experiences that were fighting to enter into her soul, but must, at all costs to her own happiness, be defeated. No such thing as ghosts, no such thing as a God, be He kind, tender, cruel or loving—nothing but what one can see, can touch, can confront with one's physical strength. She had been to a service at a Methodist chapel, her aunt had been ill, to-morrow there would be daylight and people hurrying down the street about their business, work and shops and food and sun ... No such thing as ghosts! Nothing but what you can see!

"And I'll get some work without wasting a minute," she thought, nodding her head. "In a shop if necessary—or I could be a governess—and then when he is free, Martin will be with me."

She climbed on a chair and turned down the hall-gas as she had seen Martha do. She went to the door and slipped the chain into its socket and turned the lock. She listened for a moment before she started upstairs, she saw Mr. Crashaw's eyes in the dark—she heard his voice.

"Punishment! Punishment!..."

She suddenly started to run up the black stairs, stumbled, ran faster through the passage under the picture of the armed men, arrived at last in her room, breathless.

During her undressing she stopped sometimes to listen. Her aunt's bedroom was on the floor below hers, and she certainly could hear nothing through the closed doors, and yet she fancied, as she stood there, that the sound of sobbing came up to her and, twice, a sharp cry.

"I suppose I'm terribly selfish," she thought, "I ought to want to go and help Aunt Anne, and I don't." No, she didn't. She wanted to run away from the house, miles and miles and miles. She climbed into bed and thought of her escape. If Miss Trenchard did not answer her letter, then she could go off to Uncle Mathew, greatly though she disliked the thought of that; then she could live on her three hundred pounds and look about until she found work or Martin came for her.

But so ignorant was she of the world that she did not in the least know how she could get her three hundred pounds. But Uncle Mathew would know. She thought of him standing in the doorway at the hotel, holding up a glass, then she thought of Martin, and so fell asleep.

She woke suddenly to find some one standing in her open doorway and holding up a candle. That some one was old Martha, looking strange enough in a nightdress, her scanty grey hairs untidily about her neck and a dirty red shawl over her shoulders. Maggie blinked at the light and sat up in bed.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's your aunt, Miss—Miss Anne. She's very bad. She wants you to go to her."

Maggie got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and slippers and followed the servant.

As she hurried along the dark passage she was still only half-awake; her soul had not returned into her body, but her body was awake and vibrating with the knowledge that the soul was soon coming to it, and coming to it with great news, with the consciousness of a marvellous experience. For at the instant when Martha awoke her she had been dreaming of Martin, dreaming of him physically, so that it was his body against hers, his hand hot and dry in hers cool and soft, his cheek rough and strong against hers smooth and pale. There had been no sentimentality or weakness in her dream. They had been confident and sure and defiant together, and it had been real life for her, so real that this dream life in which now she moved down the shadowy passage was about her as green water is about one when one swims under waves.

It was only slowly, as the cold air of the house at night cleared her eyes and her throat and her breast, that she came to the world consciousness again and surrendered her lover back to the shades and felt a sudden frightened fear lest, after all, she should never really know that ecstasy of which she had just been dreaming.

Nevertheless it was still with a great consciousness of Martin that she entered her aunt's bedroom. Before she entered she turned round for a moment to Martha.

"What must I do?" she asked. "What will she want me to do?"

"It's only," said Martha, "if the pains come on very bad, to give her some drops. They're in a little green bottle by her bed. Five drops ... yes, miss, five drops in a little green bottle. Only if the pains is very bad. She's brave—wonderful. I'd 'ave sat up till morning willing, and so of course would Miss Elizabeth. But she seemed to want you, miss."

They were like two conspirators whispering there in the dark. The room within was so still. Maggie very softly pushed back the door and entered. She walked a few steps inside the room and hesitated. There was no sound in the room at all, utter stillness so that Maggie could hear her own breathing as though it were some one else at her side warning her. Then slowly things emerged, the long white bed first, afterwards a shaded lamp beside it, a little table with bottles, a chair—beyond the circle of lighted shadow there were shapes, near the window a high glass, a dark shade that was the dressing-table, and faint grey squares where the windows hung.

In the room was a strange scent half wine, half medicine, and beyond that the plain tang of apples partially eaten, a little smell of oil too from the lamp—very faintly the figure of the Christ above the bed was visible. Maggie moved forward to the bed, then stopped again. She did not know what to do; she could see a dark shadow on the pillow that must she knew be her aunt's hair, and yet she did not connect that with her aunt. The room was cold and, she felt, of infinite space. The smell of the wine and the medicine made her shy and awkward as though she were somewhere where she should not be.

There came a little sigh, and then a very quiet, tired voice.

"Maggie, is that you?"

"Yes, Aunt Anne."

She came very close to the bed, and suddenly, as though a curtain had been drawn back, she could see her aunt's large eyes and white sharp face.

"It was very good of you, dear, to come. I felt ashamed to wake you up at such an hour, but I wanted you. I felt that only you must be with me to-night. It was a call from God. I felt that it must be obeyed. Sit down, dear. There, on that chair. You're not cold, are you?"

Maggie sat down, gathering her dressing-gown close about her. She was not even now drawn right out of her dream, and the room seemed fantastic, to rise and fall a little, and to be filled with sound, just out of hearing. For a time she was so sleepy that she nodded on her chair, and the green lamp swelled and quivered and the very bed seemed to sway in the dark, but soon the cold air cleared her head, and she was wide awake, staring before her at the grey window-panes. Her aunt did not for a long time speak again. Maggie sat there her mind a maze of the Chapel, old Crashaw, Miss Avies, and Martin. Slowly the cold crept into her feet and her hands, but her head now was burning hot. Then suddenly her aunt began to talk in a dreamy rather lazy voice, not her natural daily tone which was always very sharp and clear. She talked on and on; sometimes her sentences were confused and unfinished, sometimes they seemed to Maggie to have no meaning; once or twice the voice dropped so low that Maggie did not catch the words, but always there was especial urgency behind the carelessness as though every word were being spoken for a listener's benefit—a listener who sat perhaps with pencil and notebook somewhere in the dark behind them.

"So sorry ... so sorry, Maggie dear ... so sorry," the words ran up and down. "I hadn't meant to take you away before the service was over. Elizabeth could have ... sometimes my pain is very bad and I have to lie down, you know. But it's nothing—nothing really—only I'm glad, rather, that you should share all our little troubles, because then you'll know us better, won't you? Dear Maggie, there's been something between us all this time, hasn't there? Ever since our first meeting—and it's partly been my fault. I wasn't good at first, I wanted to be kind, but I was stiff and shy. You wouldn't think that I'm shy? I am, terribly. I always have been since I was very little, and just to enter a room when other people are there makes me so embarrassed ... I remember once when mother was alive her scolding me because I wouldn't come in to a tea-party. But I couldn't; I stood outside the door in an agony, doing everything to make myself go in—but I couldn't ... But now I've come to love you, dear, although of course you have your faults. But they are faults of your age, carelessness, selfishness. They are nothing in the eyes of God, who understands all our weaknesses. And you must learn to know Him, dear. That is my only prayer now. If I am taken, if I go before the great day—if it be His will—then I pray always, now that I may leave you in my place, waiting for Him as I have waited, trusting Him as I have trusted ... you saw to-night what it means to us, what it must mean to any one who has listened. There were times, years ago, when I had not turned to God, when I did not care, when I thought of earthly love ... God drew me to Himself ... You too must come, Maggie—you must come. You mustn't stay outside—you are asked, you are invited—perhaps you will be compelled ..."

The voice sank: Maggie's teeth chattered in her head from the cold, and her foot had gone to sleep. She felt obstinate and rebellious and frightened, she could not think clearly, and the words that came from her, suddenly, seemed to her not to be her own.

"Aunt Anne, I want to do everything that you and Aunt Elizabeth think I should, but I must be myself, mustn't I? I'm grown up now; I've got my three hundred pounds and I don't think I want to be religious. I'm very grateful to you and Aunt Elizabeth, but I'm not a help to you much, I'm afraid. I know I'm very careless, I do want to be better, and that's all the more reason, perhaps, why I should go out and earn my own living. I'd learn more quickly then. But I do love you and Aunt Elizabeth ..."

She broke off; she did not love them. She knew that she did not. The only human being in all the world whom she loved was Martin. Nevertheless there did come to her suddenly then a new tenderness for her aunt; the actual sight of her pain in the Chapel had deeply touched her and now her eagerness for escape was mingled with a longing to be affectionate and good.

But Aunt Anne did not seem to have heard.

"Are you sure you're not cold, dear?"

"No, aunt."

Their hands touched.

"But you are. Put that rug over you. That one at the end of the bed. I'm quiet now. I think perhaps I shall sleep a little."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Perhaps turn the lamp down, dear. That's it. A little more. Now, if you'd just raise my pillow. There, behind my head. That's the way! Why, what a good nurse you are!"

Maggie, as tenderly as she could, turned the pillow, patted it, placed it beneath her aunt's head. She was close against her aunt's face, and the eyes seemed suddenly so fierce and urgent, so insistent and powerful, that seeing them was like the discovery of some blazing fire in an empty house. Most of all, they were terrified eyes. Maggie went back to her chair. After that, she sat there during the slow evolution of Eternity; Eternity unrolled itself before her, on and on and on, grey limitless mist and space, comfortless, lifeless, hopeless. She had been for many weeks leading a thoroughly unwholesome life in that old house with those old women. She did not herself know how unhealthy it had been, but she knew that she missed the wide fields and downs of Glebeshire, the winds that blew from the sea round Borhedden, the air that swirled and raced up and down the little stony strata of St. Dreot. Now she had been kept indoors, had had no fun of any kind, had looked forward to Mr. Magnus as her chief diversion. Then Martin had come, and suddenly she had seen how dangerously her life was hemming her in. She was losing courage. She would soon be afraid to speak for herself at all; she would soon ...

In a panic at these thoughts, and feeling as though some one was trying to push her down into a coffin whilst she was still alive, she began hurriedly to speak, although she did not know whether her aunt were asleep or no.

"I think I ought to tell you, Aunt Anne, that I wrote a letter some days ago and posted it myself. It was to a lady who knew Father once in Glebeshire, and she said that if ever I wanted help I was to write to her, and so—although perhaps I oughtn't to have done it without asking you first, still I was afraid you mightn't want me to—so I sent it. I wouldn't like to hurt your feelings, Aunt Anne, and it isn't that I'm not happy with you and Aunt Elizabeth, but I ought to be earning my own living, oughtn't I? And I've only got my three hundred pounds, haven't I? I'm not complaining, but I don't know about anything yet, do I? I can't even find my way when I'm out with Aunt Elizabeth. And I'm afraid I'll never be really good enough to be religious. Perhaps if Father'd wanted me to be I might be now, but he never cared ... I hope you won't be angry, Aunt Anne, but I didn't like to-night—I didn't really. When I was there I thought that soon I'd begin to cry like the others, but it was only because every one else was crying—not because I wanted to. I hope you won't be angry, but I'm afraid I'll never be religious as you and Aunt Elizabeth want me to be; so don't you think it will be better for me to start learning something else right away?"

Maggie poured all this out and then felt immense relief. At last she was honest again; at last she had said what she felt, and they knew it and could never say that she hadn't been fair with them. She felt that her speech had cleared the air in every kind of way. She waited for her aunt's reply. No sound came from the bed. Had her aunt heard? Perhaps she slept. Maggie waited. Then timidly, and softly she said:

"Aunt Anne ... Aunt Anne ..."

No reply. Then again in a whisper:

"Aunt Anne ... Aunt Anne ..."

Supposing Aunt Anne ... Maggie trembled, then, commanding herself to be calm, she bent towards the bed.

"Aunt Anne, are you asleep?"

Suddenly Aunt Anne's face was there, the eyes closed, the mouth, the cheeks pale yellow in the faint reflection from the lamp. There was no stir, no breath.

"Aunt Anne, Aunt Anne," Maggie whispered in terror now. Then she saw that her aunt was sleeping; very, very faintly the sheets rose and fell and the fingers of the hand on the coverlet trembled a little as though they were struggling to wake.

Then Aunt Anne had heard nothing after all. But it might be that she was pretending, just to see what Maggie would say.

"Aunt Anne," whispered Maggie once more and for the last time. Then she sat back on her seat again, her hands folded, staring straight in front of her. After that she did not know for how long she sat there in a state somewhere between dream and reality. The room, although it never lost its familiarity, grew uncouthly strange; shapes grey and dim seemed to move beneath the windows, humping their backs, spinning out into long limbs, hands and legs and gigantic fingers. The deadest hour of the night was come; the outside world seemed to press upon the house, the whole world cold, thick, damp, lifeless, like an animal slain and falling with its full weight, crushing everything beneath it. Perhaps she slept—she did not know. Martin seemed to be with her, and against them was Aunt Anne, her back against the door, her hands spread, refusing to let them pass. The room joined in the struggle, the floor slipped beneath their tread, the curtain swayed forward and caught them in its folds, the lamp flickered and flickered and flickered ...

She was awake suddenly, quite acutely aware of danger. She rubbed her eyes, turned, and in the dim shadow saw her aunt sitting up in bed, her body drawn up to its intensest height, her hands pressing down, flat upon the bed. Her eyes stared as though they would break down all boundaries, but her lips trembled like the lips of a little child.

"Aunt Anne, what is it?" Maggie whispered.

"It's the pain—" Her voice was far away as though some one were speaking from the passage outside the door. "It's the pain ... I can't ... much more ..."

Maggie remembered what Martha had told her about the drops. She found the little green bottle, saw the glass by the side of it.

Suddenly she heard Aunt Anne: "Oh no ... Oh no! God I can't ... God, I can't ... I can't."

Maggie bent over the bed; she put her hand behind her aunt's back and could feel the whole body quivering, the flesh damp beneath the night-dress. She steadied her, then put the glass to her lips.

The cry was now a little whisper. "No more ... I can ... no more." Then more softly still: "Thy will, oh Lord. As thou wilt—Our Father, which art in Heaven, Hallowed ... Hallowed ... Hallowed..."

She sank down on to her pillows.

"Is it better?" Maggie asked.

Her aunt caught her hand.

"You mustn't leave me. I shan't live long, but you must stay with me until I go. Promise me! Promise me!"

"No, I can't promise," said Maggie.

"You must stay. You must stay."

"No I can't promise." Then suddenly kneeling down by the bed she put her hand on the other's arm: "Aunt Anne, I'll do anything for you—anything—to make you better—if I can help ... but not a promise, I can't promise."

"Ah, but you will stay," Aunt Anne's whisper trembled with its certainty.

That seemed the climax of the night to Maggie then. She felt that she was indeed held for eternity by the house, the Chapel, and something beyond the Chapel. The scent of the medicine, the closeness of the room, the darkness and the sickness, seemed to close all about her ... She was at the bottom of a deep well, and she would never get out, she would never get out ...

The door slowly, very softly opened, and old Martha looked in.

"She's been very bad," whispered Maggie.

"Ay, I heard something. That's why I came. You gave her the drops?"

"Yes."

"She'll sleep a bit now. I'll take your place, Miss Maggie. It's time you went back to your bed."

Maggie crept away.

She came down to breakfast to find the house bathed in sunlight and the parrot singing hoarsely "And her golden hair was hanging down her back." Aunt Elizabeth was there, cheerful and almost merry in her bird-like fashion. The world was normal, ghosts out of fashion, and this morning was the day on which the silver was cleaned. This last was Maggie's business, and very badly she did it, never being "thorough," and having a fatal habit of thinking of other things. Porridge, eggs and bacon, marmalade—

"And—her golden hair was hanging—" croaked Edward.

"Your aunt won't come down this morning, Maggie. She's much better. The sun's shining. A little walk will be a good thing. I'll buy the calico that Anne talked about. Your aunt's better."

Maggie felt ashamed of herself. What desperate silly feelings had she allowed last night? How much she had made of that service, and how weak she was to give way so easily!

"I'll clean the silver," she thought. "I'll do it better than ever"—but unfortunately she had a hole in her stocking, and Aunt Elizabeth, like a sparrow who has found a worm, told her about it.

"Mr. Crashaw's coming to tea this afternoon," she concluded.

"That's why Anne's staying in bed—to be well enough." The stocking and Mr. Crashaw dimmed a little of the morning's radiance, but behind them was the thought, "Martin must come to-day. It was like a message his look last night." She even sang to herself as she scrubbed at the silver.

They spent a domestic morning. Aunt Elizabeth did not go for her walk, but instead stayed in the dining-room and, seated at the end of the long dining-table, her head just appearing above the worn and soiled green table-cloth, tried to discipline the week's household accounts. She worked sucking one finger after another and poking her pencil into her ears.

"One pound, three shillings—ham, ham, ham—?"

At one moment she invited the cook to assist her, and that lady, crimson from the kitchen fire, bared arms akimbo, stated that she was not only the most economical woman in London, but was also, thanks to her upbringing, one of the most sober and virtuous, and if Miss Cardinal had anything to say against—

Oh no! Aunt Elizabeth had nothing to say against, only this one pound, three shillings—

Well, the cook couldn't help that; she wasn't one to let a penny out of her fingers where it shouldn't go.

So the morning hummed along; luncheon-time came, the silver was all cleaned, the stockings changed, and there was roast chicken. Thomas, with his wicked eyes, came slowly, majestically upon the scene—but even he was not sinister to-day, being interested in his own greed rather than other persons' sins.

All this time Maggie refused to think. Martin would come, then she would see.

Martin ... Martin ... Martin ... She went up into her bedroom and whispered the name over and over to herself whilst she tried to mend her stocking. She flung the stocking down and gazed out of the window on to a world that was all golden cloud and racing watery blue. The roofs swam like floating carpets in the sun, detached from the brick and mortar beneath them, carried by the racing clouds. It was only at that sudden gaze that she realised that she was a prisoner. All her alarm came back to her.

"Why can't I go out? I'll put on my hat and just walk out. No one can stop me. No one ..."

But she knew that she could not. Something more must happen first. She turned from the window with a little shudder, finished very clumsily her stocking, and as the cuckoo clock struck halfpast three went down to the drawing-room.

There to her surprise, she found Caroline Smith. The events of the last few days had, a little, dimmed Caroline from her memory. She had not seen Caroline for a fortnight. She did not know that she especially wanted to see Caroline now. However, it was very certain that Caroline wanted to see her. The young woman was dressed in rose-coloured silk that stood out from her slim body almost like a crinoline, and she had a straw funnel-shaped hat with roses perched on the side of her lovely head. She kissed Maggie many times, and then sitting down with her little sharp black shoes poked out in front of her, she ran on:

"It's been too bad, Maggie, dear; it's simply ages since we had a moment, isn't it, but it hasn't been my fault. Father's been ill—bronchitis—and I've had to help Mother. Father's been so happy, he's just been able to lie in bed for days and think about God. None of those tiresome people at the Bank to interrupt him, and chicken and jelly as much as he liked. He was so unhappy yesterday when he had to go back to work, poor dear ... But, Maggie, I hear you were at the service last night. How did you like it?"

"Like it?" said Maggie. "I don't know that it's a thing one likes, exactly."

"Doesn't one? I don't know. I'm not one of the Inside Saints, you know, and I wouldn't be if they wanted me to he. But you're one now, they say, and I never would have thought it. You don't look a bit like one, and I shouldn't have dreamt that you'd ever stand that sort of thing. You look so matter-of-fact."

Maggie was on the point of bursting out that she was not an Inside Saint, and would never be one, when caution restrained her. She had learnt already that her gay young companion was not as trustworthy as best friends ought to be.

"It was the first time, last night," she said.

"Yes, I know, and Miss Cardinal was ill and had to come away in the middle, didn't she? It must have been a simply awful meeting, because Mother came back as limp as anything. She'd been crying buckets, and has a dreadful headache to-day. I suppose Mr. Crashaw gave it them. I've never heard him, but I've seen him. Horrid old monkey—I hope Miss Cardinal's better to-day."

"Yes, thank you," said Maggie. "She's better."

"Well, that's a good thing. I'm so glad. And you, you darling, what did you think of it all? I'm sure you didn't cry buckets. I can see you sitting there as quiet as anything, like a little Quaker. I'd like to have gone just to have seen you. I hear Martin Warlock was there too. Was he?"

"He was," said Maggie.

"Fancy that! I wonder what he went for. His father made him, I expect. You know they say he's getting on awfully badly at home and that there are quarrels all the time. I don't know, of course, but his sister can't stand him. She's always showing her feelings—not very good taste, I think, but Mr. Thurston eggs her on. They'll be making a match of it one day, those two ... I say, Maggie—" Caroline drew her chair close. "I'll give you a secret. You won't tell any one, will you?"

"Certainly not—if you tell me not to," said Maggie.

"Well, Martin Warlock and I—ever since he came back. Oh! I don't say it's anything really. But he's attracted by me and would like to go farther. He'll be asking me to marry him one of these days, and then I'll have fun. He would have done the other day if I'd let him. I like him rather, don't you? He's getting a bit fat, of course, but he's got nice eyes, and then he's a real man. I like real men. But there, you'll be thinking me coarse, I know you will. I'm not coarse really, only impulsive. You don't like me, honestly, if it were known. Oh no! you don't! I can tell. I always know. But I don't care—I love you. You're a darling—and what I say is if you love some one, just love them. Never mind what they think. Don't you agree with me? But you wouldn't. You wouldn't think of loving anybody. But I'm not really bad—only careless, Mother says—"

What Mother said could not be known, because the door opened and Martha announced Mr. Crashaw. The old man, leaning on a walking stick, came forward and greeted Maggie and Caroline with good-temper and amiability. He was indeed in day-time a very mild old man, and it was difficult for Maggie to believe that this was the same who last night had frightened her out of her wits and led her to the edge of such strange suspicions. He was more than ever like a monkey, with his bony brown forehead, protuberant eyes and large mottled nose, and he sat there all huddled up by his rheumatism, a living example of present physical torments rather than future spiritual ones. It was apparent at once that he liked pretty young women, and he paid Caroline a number of flattering attentions, disregarding Maggie with a frankness that witnessed to a life that had taught one lesson at least, never on any occasion to waste time. Maggie did not mind—it amused her to see her terror of the night before transformed into a mere serenading crippled old gentleman, and to see, too, the excited pleasure with which Caroline accepted even such decayed attentions as these. But what was it that had persuaded her last night? Why did she now spend her time half in one world and half in another? Which world was the real one?

Aunt Anne very soon joined them, and this quiet, composed figure only added to Maggie's scorn of her last night's terrors. Was this the same who had struggled with such agony, who had made Maggie feel that she was caught in a trap and imprisoned for ever?