g the figure of Aunt Anne haunted her.
She felt for a brief moment that she would do anything, yes, even
surrender Martin, to ease her aunt's pain. And then she knew that she
would not, and she called herself cruel and selfish and felt for an
instant a dark shadow threatening her because she was so. But when she
saw Martin outside Hatchard's she forgot it all. It was a strange thing
that during those weeks they neither of them asked any questions about
their home affairs. It was as though they both inwardly realised that
there was trouble for them of every kind waiting outside and that they
could only definitely realise their happiness by building a wall around
themselves. They knew perhaps in their secret hearts, or at any rate
Martin knew, that they could not hold their castle for long. But is not
the gift of three perfect weeks a great thing for any human being to be
given--and who has the temerity, the challenging audacity, to ask with
confidence for even so much?

On this particular morning Martin said to her:

"Before we get into the 'bus, Maggie, you've got to come into a shop
with me." He was especially boyish and happy and natural that morning.
It was strange how his face altered when he was happy. His brow was
clear, his eyes were bright, and he had a kind of crooked confident
smile that must have won anybody's heart. His whole carriage was that
of a boy who was entering life for the first time with undaunted
expectation that it could give him nothing but the best and jolliest
things. Maggie as she looked at him this morning caught her breath with
the astonishing force of her love for him. "Oh, how I'll look after
him," was her thought. "He shall never be unhappy again."

They crossed the street together, and stood for a moment close together
on the kerb in the middle way as though they were quite alone in the
world. She caught his arm and they ran before a charging motor-'bus,
laughing. People turned back and looked at them, so happy they seemed.
They walked up Bond Street and Martin drew her into a jeweller's. She
had never possessed any ornament except her coral necklace in all her
life and she knew now for the first time how terribly she liked
beautiful things. It was useless of her to pretend that she did not
know that he was going to give her something. She did not pretend. A
very thin old man, who looked like one of the prophets, drawn out of
the wilderness and clothed by the most fashionable of Londo