-I haven't seen you for months."

"That's not my fault," he answered. "I thought we were to have been
friends, and you've run away every time you saw the corner of my dusty
coat poking round the door."

"Yes," she said, "I have--I've been frightened of every one lately."

"And you're not now?" he asked, looking at her with that sudden bright
sharpness that was so peculiarly his.

"No, I'm not," she answered. "I'm frightened of nobody."

He said nothing to that, but stared fixedly in front of him.

"I'm in a bad mood," he said. "I've been trying for weeks to get on
with a novel. Just a fortnight ago a young man and a young woman took
shelter from the rain in the doorway of a deserted house--they're still
there now, and they haven't said a word to one another all that time."

"Why not?" asked Maggie.

"They simply won't speak," he answered her.

"Well then, I should start another story," said Maggie brightly.

"Ah," he said, shaking his head. "What's the use of starting one if you
know you're never going to finish it, what's the use of finishing it if
you know no one is ever going to read it?" Maggie shook her head.

"You've changed. When I saw you last you told me that you didn't mind
whether any one ever read them or not, and that you just wrote them
because you loved doing them."

"Every author," said Mr. Magnus gloomily, "says that to himself when he
can't sell his books, but it's all vainglory, I'm afraid."

"I can't help being glad," Maggie answered. "There are such interesting
things you might do. I can't imagine why any one writes books now when
there are so many already in existence that nobody's read."

He wasn't listening to her. He looked up suddenly and said quite wildly:

"It's terrible all this that's going on. You know about it, of
course--Warlock's visions I mean and the trouble it's making. I'm
outside it and you're outside it, but we're being brought into it all
the same--how can we help it when we love the people who are in it?
It's so easy to say that it's nonsense, that people ought to be wiser
nowadays; that it's hysteria, even insanity--I know all that and, of
course, I don't believe for a moment that God's coming in a chariot of
fire on New Year's Eve especially for the benefit of Thurston, Miss
Avies and the rest, but that doesn't end it--it ought to end it, but it
doesn't. There's more in some people's madness than in other people's
sanity, and anyway, even if it's all nonsense i