e whole room which
had already almost entrapped her and that the fight was too much for
her, she went.

When she came to her own room and thought about her invitation she
wished, with a sudden change of mood, that she had a pretty frock or
two. She would have loved to have been grand to-night, and now the best
that she could do was to add her coral necklace and a little gold
brooch that years ago her father had given her, to the black dress that
she was already wearing. She realised, with a strange little pang of
loneliness, that she had not had one evening's fun since her arrival in
London--no, not one--and she would not have captured to-night had Aunt
Anne been able to prevent it.

Then as her mind returned back to her uncle she felt with a throb of
excited anticipation that perhaps after all this evening was to prove
the turning-point of her life. Her little escape into the streets, her
posting of the letter, had been followed so immediately by Uncle
Mathew's visit, and now this invitation!

"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
ag