y passing these last hours?

"Oh, it isn't true! It can't be true!" she said to herself. "It's a
shame to frighten them so!"

By eleven o'clock the excitement of the day had wearied her so that she
fell fast asleep in the arm-chair beside the fire. She woke to find
Aunt Anne standing over her.

"It's a quarter past eleven. It's time to put on your things," she
said. So she was to go! She rose and, in spite of herself, her limbs
were trembling and her teeth chattered. To her surprise Aunt Anne bent
forward and kissed her on the forehead.

"Maggie," she said, "if I've been harsh to you during these weeks I'm
sorry. I've done what I thought my duty, but I wouldn't wish on this
night that we should have any unkindness in our hearts towards one
another."

"Oh, that's all right," Maggie said awkwardly.

She went up to put on her things; then the three of them went out into
the dark foggy street together.

Because it was New Year's Eve there were many people about, voices
laughing and shouting through the mist and then some one running with a
flaring light, then some men walking singing in chorus. The aunts said
nothing as they went. Maggie's thoughts were given now to wondering
whether Martin would be there. She tied her mind to that, but behind it
was the irritating knowledge that her teeth were chattering and her
knees trembling and that she did not maintain her courage as a Cardinal
should.

As they entered the Chapel the hoarse ugly clock over the door grunted
out half-past eleven. The Chapel seemed on Maggie's entering it to be
half in darkness, there was a thin splutter of gas over the
reading-desk at the far end and some more light by the door, but the
centre of the building was a shadowy pool. Only a few were present,
gathered together in the middle seats below the desk, perhaps in all a
hundred persons. Of these three-quarters were women. The aunts and
Maggie went into their accustomed seat some six rows from the front.
When Maggie rose from her knees and looked about her she recognised at
once that only the Inside Saints were here.

Amongst the men she recognised Mr. Smith, Caroline's father, two old
men, brothers, who had followed Mr. Warlock from their youth, and a
young pale man who had once been to tea with her aunts. Martin she saw
at once was not there.

For some time, perhaps for ten minutes, they all sat in silence, and
only the gruff comment of the clock sounded in the building. Then the
light