e; they moved again,
and he could just gather the sense of her whisper.

"Do you love me?"

An immense pity thrilled through him. He put his arm about her, held
her closely, and pressed his lips against her cheek. She reddened, and
hid her face against him. Waymark touched her hair caressingly, then
freed his other hand, and went from the room.

Maud sat in thought till a loud ring at the door-bell made her start
and flee upstairs. The room in which she and Waymark sat when they were
by themselves was in no danger of invasion, but she feared the
possibility of meeting her mother to-night. Her father was away from
home, as usual, but the days of his return were always uncertain, and
Mrs. Enderby might perchance open the door of the little sitting-room
just to see whether he was there, as it was here he ordinarily employed
himself when in the house. From her bedroom Maud could hear several
people ascend the stairs. It was ten o'clock, but an influx of visitors
at such an hour was nothing remarkable. She could hear her mother's
laugh, and then the voice of a man, a voice she knew but too well--that
of Mr. Budge.

Her nerves were excited. The night was close, and there were mutterings
of thunder at times; the cloud whence they came seemed to her to spread
its doleful blackness over this one roof. An impulse seized her; she
took paper and sat down at her desk to write. It was a letter to
Waymark, a letter such as she had never addressed to him, and which,
even in writing it, she was conscious she could not send. Her hand
trembled as she filled the pages with burning words. She panted for
more than he had given her; this calm, half-brotherly love of his was
just now like a single drop of water to one dying of thirst; she cried
to him for a deeper draught of the joy of life. The words came to her
without need of thought; tears fell hot from her eyes and blotted what
she wrote.

The tears brought her relief; she was able to throw her writing aside,
and by degrees to resume that dull, vacant mood of habitual suffering
which at all events could be endured. From this, too, there was at
times a retreat possible with the help of a book. She had no mind to
sleep, and on looking round, she remembered that the book she had been
reading in the early part of the day was downstairs. It was after
midnight, and she seemed to have a recollection of hearing the visitors
leave the house a little while ago; it would be safe to venture as