"I knew her in London," said Maggie.

"I like her," said Paul. "A bright young creature."

"Hum!" said Grace.

That was a wonderful spring evening, the first spring evening of the
year. The ugly garden swam in a mist faintly cherry-colour; through the
mist a pale evening sky, of so rich a blue that it was almost white,
was shadowing against a baby moon sharply gold. The bottles on the wall
were veiled by the evening mist; a thrush sang in the little bush at
the end of the lawn.

Paul whispered to Maggie: "Come out into the garden."

She went with him, frightened; she could feel his arm tremble against
her waist; his cold hard fingers caught hers. No current ran from her
body to his. They were apart, try as she may. When they had walked the
length of the lawn he caught her close to him, put his hand roughly up
to her neck and, bending her head towards his, kissed her. She heard
his words, strangled and fierce.

"Love me, Maggie-love me-you must--"

When he released her, looking back towards the dark house, she saw
Grace standing there with a lamp in her hand.

Against her will she shared his feeling of guilt, as, like children
caught in a fault, they turned back towards the house.

CHAPTER V

THE BATTLE OF SKEATON

FIRST YEAR

Afterwards, when Maggie looked back she was baffled. She tried to
disentangle the events between that moment when Grace, holding the lamp
in her hand, blinked at them as they came across the lawn, and that
other most awful moment when, in Paul's study, Grace declared final and
irrevocable war.

Between those two events ran the history of more than two years, and
there was nothing stranger than the way that the scene in the garden
and the scene in the study seemed to Maggie to be close together. What
were the steps, she used to ask herself afterwards, that led to those
last months of fury and tragedy and disaster? Was it my fault? Was it
hers? Was it Paul's? What happened? If I had not done this or that, if
Grace had not said--no, it was hopeless. She would break off in
despair. Isolated scenes appeared before her, always bound, on either
side, by that prologue and that finale, but the scenes would not form a
chain. She could not connect; she would remain until the end bewildered
as to Grace's motives. She never, until the day of her death, was to
understand Grace.

"She was angry for such little things," she said afterwards.

"She hated me to be myself." The two years in