up to her
for the loss of Adair, she was trying to save him from the rashness of
committing himself too fatally to Terry. They were altruists, actuated
by self-interested motives.

And yet it was a friendship not untinged by enmity. His enmity was
awakened when she became too possessive in the demands which she made
and especially when she let fall criticisms, however mild, concerning
Terry. These occurrences set him thinking of the other casuals who had
ventured on her doorstep, not meaning to stay, and had ended by hanging
up their hats in her hall. Her enmity was roused by the courteous
circumspection of his behavior. He never admitted her to the privacy of
his inmost thoughts. He could be gay and gallant and bountifully
generous, but he never permitted her to peep beneath the surface. He
addressed her invariably as Mrs. Lockwood. The use of her surname held
her at arm's length. She longed most frightfully to hear him call her by
the name that was less safe. She denied to herself that she wanted him
to make love to her; at the same time she was disappointed at the
persistency with which he held her off. She liked to believe that, if he
had made love to her, she would have rebuffed him. She rehearsed many
times the indignant words with which she would have set him in his
place; she would have reminded him that it was for Reggie Pollock she
was waiting--as though he were not dead, but only round the corner. To
her chagrin Tabs never gave her the least incentive to employ them.

He saw her never more and frequently less than once a day. There was a
week at a stretch when he saw nothing of her. She bridged these tedious
intervals of expecting by the length of her telephone conversations.
Whenever he stayed away for long, she tortured herself with suspicions
that his courtship of Terry had begun to prosper. If he returned
debonair and smiling, she felt confirmed in these suspicions. He was
most dear to her when he returned in an under-mood of distress. She knew
then that she was necessary; to be necessary was the passion of her
heart. Then she would become gay and tender and mothering--an altogether
sweeter, gentler and more self-effacing Maisie.

Whither were they drifting--toward marriage or only toward infatuation?
If you had asked Tabs, he would have replied promptly, "Toward neither."
He had promised to tide her over the dull spots. She had advised him to
take a course of education in his own value in order that h