d. He scarcely
looked at her but stared anxiously up and down the street.

"What is it?" she asked breathlessly. "Look here, Maggie," he began,
still scarcely looking at her. "I must get back at once. I only came to
tell you that we must drop our meetings for the next day or two--until
it's blown over."

"Until what's blown over," she asked him.

"It's my father. I don't know what exactly has happened. They'll none
of them tell me, damn them. It's Caroline Smith. She's been talking to
Amy about you and me. I know that because of what Amy said about you at
breakfast this morning."

"What did she say?"

"She wouldn't speak out. She hinted. But she admitted that Caroline
Smith had told her something. But she doesn't matter. Nothing matters
except father. He mustn't be excited just now. His heart's so bad. Any
little thing ... We must wait."

She saw that he was scarcely realising her at all. She choked down all
questions that concerned themselves. She simply agreed, nodding her
head.

He did look at her then, smiling as he used to do.

"It's awfully hard on us. It won't be for more than a day or two. But I
must put things right at home or it will be all up. I don't care for
the others, of course, but if anything happened to father through me
..." He told her to write to the Charing Cross post-office. He would do
the same. In a day or two it would be all right. He pressed her hand
and was gone.

When she looked about her the street seemed quite empty although it was
full of people. She threw up her head. She wouldn't be beaten by
anybody ... only, it was lonely going back to the house and all of them
... alone ... without Martin.

She cried a little on her way home. But they were the last tears she
shed.

CHAPTER IX

THE INSIDE SAINTS

Maggie, when she was nearly home, halted suddenly. She stopped as when
on the threshold of a room that should be empty one sees waiting a
stranger. If at the end of all this she should lose Martin! ...

There was the stranger who had come to her now and would not again
depart. She recognised the sharp pain, the almost unconscious pulling
back on the sudden edge of a dim pit, as something that would always be
with her now--always. One knows that in the second stage of a great
intimacy one's essential loneliness is only redoubled by close
companionship. One asks for so much more, and then more and more, but
that final embrace is elusive and no physical contact can su