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 a