nless, her fingers still on Maggie's arm.

Inside the house there was Jane. She seemed at once to under-stand,
and, with Aunt Elizabeth, led Aunt Anne up the dark stairs.

They disappeared, leaving Maggie alone in the hall, whose only sound
was the ticking clock from the stairs and only light the dim lamp above
the door.

CHAPTER V

THE CHOICE

She waited for some time alone in the hall listening for she knew not
what. Her departure from the Chapel had been too abrupt to allow her in
a moment to shake off the impression of it--above all, the impression
of Mr. Crashaw standing there, his arms stretched out to her, his eyes
burning her through and through with the urgent insistence of his
discovery.

She was tired, her head ached horribly, she would have given everything
at that moment for a friend who would care for her and protect her from
her own wild fears. She did not know of what she was afraid, but she
knew that she felt that she would rather do anything than spend the
night in that house. And yet what could she do? How could she escape?
She knew that she could not. Oh! if only Martin would come! Where was
he? Why could he not carry her off that very night? Why did he not come?

She gazed desperately about her. Could she not leave the house there
and then? But where should she go? What could she do without a friend
in London? She stood there, clasping and unclasping her hands, looking
up at the black stairs, listening for some sound from above, fancying a
ghost in every darkening corner of the place.

Then her common sense reasserted itself. It was something, at any rate,
that she was out of the Chapel, away from Mr. Crashaw's piercing eyes,
Mr. Thurston's rasping voice, Mr. Warlock's reproachful melancholy. She
felt this evening as though by struggling with all her strength she
could shut the gates upon new experiences that were fighting to enter
into her soul, but must, at all costs to her own happiness, be
defeated. No such thing as ghosts, no such thing as a God, be He kind,
tender, cruel or loving--nothing but what one can see, can touch, can
confront with one's physical strength. She had been to a service at a
Methodist chapel, her aunt had been ill, to-morrow there would be
daylight and people hurrying down the street about their business, work
and shops and food and sun ... No such thing as ghosts! Nothing but
what you can see!

"And I'll get some work without wasting a minute," she thoug