ion, where they'll think of something else than the Lord
and His Coming. I want real life, banks and motor-cars and shops and
clothes and work ..."

She stopped suddenly.

Aunt Anne was doing what Maggie had never seen her do before, even in
the worst bouts of her pain--she was crying ... cold solitary lonely
tears that crept slowly, reluctantly down her thin cheeks.

"I meant to do well. In everything I have done ill ... Everything has
failed in my hands--"

Once again, as long before at St. Dreot's, Maggie could do nothing.

There was a long miserable silence, then Aunt Anne got up and went away.

Next day Katherine came in a beautiful motor-car to fetch Maggie.
Maggie had packed her few things. Bound her neck next her skin was the
ring with three pearls ...

She said good-bye to the house: her bedroom beneath which the
motor-omnibuses clanged, the sitting-room with the family group, the
passage with the Armed Men, the dark hall with the green baize door ...
then good-bye to Aunt Elizabeth (two kisses), Aunt Anne (one kiss),
Martha, Thomas the cat, the parrot ... all, everything, good-bye,
good-bye, good-bye!

May I never see any of you again. Never, never, never, never! ...

She was helped into the car, rugs were wrapped round her, there was a
warm cosy smell of rich leather, a little clock ticked away, a silver
vase with red and blue flowers winked at her, and Katherine was there
close beside her ...

Never again, never again! And yet how strange, as they turned the
corner of the street down into the Strand, Maggie felt a sudden pang of
regret, of pathos, of loneliness, as though she were leaving something
that had loved her dearly, and leaving it without a word of
friendliness.

"Poor dear!" She wanted to return, to tell it ... to tell it what? She
had made her choice. She was plunging now into the other half of the
world, and plunging not quite alone, because she was taking Martin with
her.

"I do hope you won't mind, dear," said Katherine. "My cousin Paul--the
clergyman you met once--is staying with us. He and his sister. No one
else."

"Oh, I shan't mind," said Maggie. Her fingers, inside her blouse,
tightly clutched the little pearl ring.

CHAPTER II

PLUNGE INTO THE OTHER HALF

For a week Maggie was so comfortable that she could think of nothing
but that. It must be remembered that she had never before known what
comfort was, never at St. Dreot's, never at Aunt Anne's, and these t