nd 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 onc