you don't, Martin, see," she answered him, "is that I've
got some right to think of my own happiness. It's quite true what you
say, that if you get well and decide you don't want to see me I won't
follow you. Of course I won't. Perhaps one day you will want me all the
same. But I'm happy only with you, and so long as I don't bore you I'm
going to stay. I've always been wrong with every one else, stupid and
doing everything I shouldn't. But with you it isn't so. I'm not stupid,
and however you behave I'm happy. I can't help it. It's just so."

"But how can you be happy?" he said, "I'm not the sort for any one to
be happy with. When I've been drinking I'm impossible. I'm sulky and
lazy, and I don't want to be any better either. You may think you're
happy these first few weeks, but you won't be later on."

"Let's try," said Maggie, laughing. "Here's a bargain, Martin. You say
I don't bore you. I'll stay with you until you're quite well. Then if
you don't want me I'll go and not bother you until you ask for me. Is
that a bargain?"

"You'd much better not," he said.

"Oh, don't think I'm staying," she answered, "because I think you so
splendid that I can't leave you. I don't think you splendid at all. And
it's not because I think myself splendid either. I'm being quite
selfish about it. I'm staying simply because I'm happier so."

"You'd much better not," he repeated.

"Is that a bargain?"

"Yes, if you like," he answered, looking at her with puzzled eyes. It
was the first long conversation that they had had. After it, he was no
nicer than before. He never kissed her, he never touched her, he seldom
talked to her; when she talked, he seemed to be little interested. For
hours he lay there, looking in front of him, saying nothing. When the
little doctor came they wrangled and fought together but seemed to like
one another.

Through it all Maggie could see that he was riddled with deep shame and
self-contempt and haunted, always, by the thought of his father. She
longed to speak to him about his father's death, but as yet she did not
dare. If once she could persuade him that that had not been his fault,
she could, she thought, really help him. That was the secret canker at
his heart and she could not touch it.

Strangely, as the days passed, the years that had been added to him
since their last meeting seemed to fall away. He became to her more and
more the boy that he had been when she had known him before. In a
th