and was entangled by
a vast quantity of useless lumber. She was really shocked by
carelessness and inaccuracy because she was radically careless and
inaccurate herself but didn't know it.

"If there's one thing I value it's order." she would say, but in
struggling to remember superficial things she forgot all essentials.
Her brain moved just half as slowly as everything else.

That winter was warm and muggy, with continuous showers of warm rain
that seamed to change into mud in the air as it fell.

The Church was filled with the clammy mist of its central heating.
Maggie, as she sat through service after service, watched one headache
race after another. The air was full of headache; she asked once that a
window might be kept open. "That would mean Death in Skeaton. You don't
understand the Skeaton air," said Grace.

"That's because I don't get enough of it," said Maggie. She found
herself looking back to the Chapel services with wistful regret. What
had there been there that was not here? Here everything was ordered,
arranged, in decent sequence, in regular symmetry and progression. And
yet no one seemed to Maggie to listen to what they were saying, and no
one thought of the meaning of the words that they used.

And if they did, of what use would it be? The affair was all settled;
heaven was arrayed, parcelled out, its very streets and courts mapped
and described. It was the destination of every one in the building as
surely as though they were travelling to London by the morning express.
They were sated with knowledge of their destiny--no curiosity, no
wonder, no agitation, no fear. Even the words of the most beautiful
prayers had ceased to have any meaning because the matter had been
settled so long ago and there was nothing more to be said. How that
Chapel had throbbed with expectation, with amaze, with curiosity, with
struggle! Foolish much of it perhaps, stifling it had seemed then in
its superstition. Maggie had been afraid then, so afraid that she could
not sleep at nights. How she longed now for that fear to return to her!

At this point she would discover that she was beckoning back to her the
figures of that other world. They must not come ... the two worlds must
not join or she was lost ... she turned her back from her memories and
her desires.

During this winter there were the two affairs of Mr. Toms and Caroline.

Maggie carried out her resolve of calling on Mr. Toms. She did it one
dark afternoo