ot want them he wanted only the material physical life of the ordinary
man. It must be because he was idling. He would get work at once, join
with some one in the City, go abroad again ... but perhaps even then he
would not escape. Thoughts like those of the last weeks did not depend
for their urgency on place or time. And Maggie, she was mixed up in it
all. He was aware, as he hesitated before opening the door, of the
strangest feeling of belonging to her, not love, nor passion, not
sentiment even. Only as though he had suddenly realised that with new
perils he had received also new protection.

He went upstairs with a feeling that he was on the eve of events that
would change his whole world.

As Martin climbed to the top of the black crooked staircase he was
conscious, as though it had been shown him in a vision, that he was on
the edge of some scene that might shape for him the whole course of his
future life. He had been aware, once or twice before, of such a
premonition, and, as with most men, half of him had rejected and half
of him received the warning. To-day, however, there were reasons enough
for thinking this no mere baseless superstition. With Maggie, with his
father, with his sister, with his own life the decision had got to be
taken, and it was with an abrupt determination that he would end, at
all costs, the fears and uncertainties of these last weeks that he
pushed back the hall-door and entered. He noticed at once strange
garments hanging on the rack and a bright purple umbrella which
belonged, as he knew, to a certain Mrs. Alweed, a friend of his
mother's and a faithful servant of the Chapel, stiff and assertive in
the umbrella-stand. There was a tea-party apparently. Well, he could
not face that immediately. He would have to go in afterwards ...
meanwhile ...

He turned down the passage, pushed back his father's door and entered.
He paused abruptly in the doorway; there, standing in front of the
window facing him, his pale chin in the air, his legs apart,
supercilious and self-confident, stood Thurston. His father's desk was
littered with papers, rustling and blowing a little in the breeze from
the window that was never perfectly closed.

One candle, on the edge of the desk, its flame swaying in the air was
the only light. Martin's first impulse was to turn abruptly back again
and go up to his room. He could not speak to that fellow now, he could
not! He half turned. Then something stopped him: