ushing it a little, she saw a servant-girl on her
knees scrubbing the floor. At the noise of her step the girl looked up.

"Is Mr. Warlock here?" Maggie asked, but the words were choked in her
throat.

"Wot d'ye sye?" the girl asked.

Maggie repeated her question.

"Yes--'e's upstairs. Always is. Fust floor, second door on yer left."

Maggie went up. She found the door. She knocked. There was no answer.
She pushed the door, peered through and looked in. She saw a room with
a dirty grimy window, a broken faded red sofa, a deal table. No one
there.

She entered and stood listening. A door beyond her opened and a man
came in. She knew at once that it was Martin. Her thoughts followed one
another in strange flurried inconsequence. Yes, it was Martin. He was
fatter than he had been--fat and ill. Very ill. His face was pale, his
hair, thinner than before, unbrushed. He was wearing an old dirty blue
suit with a coat that buttoned over the waistcoat like a seaman's
jacket. Yes, he was ill and fat and unkempt, but it was Martin. At that
reiterated assurance in the depths of her soul she seemed to sink into
a marvellous certain tranquillity--so certain that she shed, as it were
with a gesture, all the unhappiness and doubt and desolation with which
the last years had burdened her.

She had "touched" Martin again, and with that "touch" she was safe. It
did not matter how he treated her nor whether he wanted her. She was
sane and happy and whole again as she had not been since he left her.

Meanwhile he looked at her across the dark room, frowning.

"Who is it?" he asked. "What do you want?"

The sound of his voice moved her passionately. For how long she had
ached and yearned for it! He spoke more huskily, with a thicker tone
than he had done, but it was the same voice, rough a little and slow.

"Don't you know me, Martin?" she said, laughing for sheer happiness.
She saw before she spoke that he had recognised her. He said nothing,
staring at her across the table; and she, held by some safe instinct,
did not move from where she was.

At last he said:

"Well ... What do you want?"

"Oh, Martin, don't you recognise me? I'm Maggie."

He nodded. "Yes, I know. You mustn't come here, though. We've nothing
to say to one another nowadays--no, nothing." He didn't look at her;
his eyes were turned towards the grimy window.

She had an astonishing sense of her possession of him. She laughed and
came close to the table.