I am."

"You mustn't," said she. "I can't take it from you."

He had approached this point with a horrible dread lest she should
misunderstand him.

"Better to take it from me than from him, or anybody else," he said
significantly; "if it must be."

But Maggie had not misunderstood.

"I can work," she said. "I can pay a little _now_."

"No, no. Never mind about that. Keep it--keep all you earn."

"I can't keep it. I'll pay you back again. I'll work my fingers to the
bone."

"Oh, not for me" he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go.

Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour.

"Yes," she said, "for you."

CHAPTER XXII

Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie's door. In
justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the
passionate, perverted creature. And yet there was a sense in which
Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent.
Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing
and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary
taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little
vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's
honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him
to the vision. And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child,
and feverish from her hurt. He had asked her what she had wanted with
Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was "to help him."

He said to himself that he wouldn't be in Gorst's place for a good deal,
to have that on his conscience.

As it happened, the prodigal's conscience was by no means easy. He called
in Prior Street that evening to learn the result of his friend's
intervention. He submitted humbly to Majendie's judgment of his conduct.
He agreed that he had been a brute to Maggie, that he might certainly do
worse than marry her, and that his best reason for not marrying her was
his knowledge that Maggie was ten times too good for him. He was only
disposed to be critical of his friend's diplomacy when he learned that
Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford.
But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not
to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment
of her fine renunciation. He admitted that he had known all along that
Maggie had her own high innocence. And when he rea