of her vision she backed on to Paul's study door, turned the handle,
and disappeared. The hall was in darkness again. Maggie stumbled her
way towards the staircase, then, seeing Grace's terrified eyes, filled
with a horror that she, Maggie Cardinal, should cause any one to look
at her like that, she ran clumsily upstairs, shutting herself into her
bedroom.

During the next fortnight the dominant element in the situation was
Grace's terror. Skeaton was already beginning to forget the story of
the suicide. Maggie was marked for ever now as "queer and strange," but
Paul was not blamed; he was rather, pitied and even liked the more. But
Grace could not forget. Maggie intended perhaps to murder her in
revenge for her uncle's death; well, then, she must be murdered ... She
would not leave her brother. She could not consider the future. She
knew that she could not live in the same house with Maggie for long,
but she would not go and Maggie would not go ... What was to happen?

Poor Grace, the tortures that she suffered during those weeks will not
be understood by persons with self-confidence and a hearty contempt for
superstition.

She paid the penalty now for the ghosts of her childhood--and no one
could help her.

Maggie saw that Paul was, with every day, increasingly unhappy. He had
never been trained to conceal his feelings, and although he tried now
he succeeded very badly. He would come into her room in the early
morning hours and lie down beside her. He would put his arms around her
and kiss her, and, desperately, as though he were doing it for a wager,
make love to her. She felt, desperate also on her side, that she could
comfort and make him happy, if only he would want something less from
her than passion. But always after an hour or a little more, he crept
away again to his own room, disappointed, angered, frustrated. These
hours were the stranger because, during the day, he showed her nothing
of this mood, but was kindly and friendly and distant.

She would have done anything for him; she tried sometimes to be
affectionate to him, but always, at once, he turned upon her with a
hungry, impassioned look ...

She knew, without any kind of doubt, that the only way that she could
make him happy again was to leave him. His was not a nature to brood,
for the rest of his days, on something that he had lost.

Only once did he make any allusion to the coming Revival services. He
burst out one day, at luncheon: "The