to you for a while."
She looked at Maggie for a moment. Then she said:

"Why don't you clear out of all this?"

The voice was so abrupt and the words so unexpected that Maggie jumped.

"Why don't I?" she repeated.

"Yes, you," said Miss Avies. "You've no place here in all this
business. You don't believe in it, do you?"

"No," said Maggie.

"And you don't want to use it for something you do believe in?"

"No," said Maggie. "Well then, clear out."

Maggie, colouring a little, said:

"My aunts have been very good to me. I oughtn't to leave them."

"Fiddlesticks," said Miss Avies. "Your life's your own, not your
aunts'."

She sat down and stayed bolt upright and motionless near the fire; she
flung a thin dark shadow like a stain on the wall. There was a long
pause between them. After that abrupt opening there seemed to be
nothing to say. Maggie's thoughts also were elsewhere. She was wishing
now passionately that she had not given that note to Caroline.

Suddenly Miss Avies said, "What do you do with yourself all day?"

Maggie laughed. "Try and make myself less careless, Miss Avies."

Miss Avies replied, "You'll never make yourself less careless. We are
as we are."

"But don't you think," said Maggie, "that one can cure one's faults?"

"One gets rid of one only to make room for another ... But that doesn't
matter. The point is that one should have an ambition. What's your
ambition, child?"

Maggie didn't answer. Her ambition was Martin, but she couldn't tell
Miss Avies so.

At last, after a long pause, as Miss Avies still seemed to be waiting,
she answered:

"I suppose that I want to earn my living--to be independent."

"Well, leave this place then," said Miss Avies. "There's no
independence here." Then added, as though to herself. "They think
they're looking for the face of God ... It's only for themselves and
their vanity they're looking."

Maggie said, to break another of the long pauses that seemed to be
always forming between them:

"I think every one ought to earn their own living, don't you?"

Miss Avies shook her head. "You're very young--terribly young. I've got
no advice to give you except to lead a healthy life somewhere away from
these surroundings. We're an unnatural lot here and you're a healthy
young creature ... Have you got a lover?"

Maggie smiled. "I've got a friend," she said. Miss Avies sighed.
"That's more than I've got," she said.

"Not that I've time for one," she a