curried out to vanish in a long
curve behind the yews. The very world itself of beast and bird was
still but half awake, and from the hamlet outside the fence, beyond
the trees, rose as yet no skein of smoke and no sound of feet upon the
cobbles.

For the time no future presented itself to her. The minutes that
passed were enough. She regarded indeed the fact of the old man asleep
in the inn, of the old lady upstairs, but she rehearsed nothing of
what should be said to them by and by. She did not even think of the
hour, or whether she should go to bed presently for a while. She
traced no sequence of thought; she scarcely gave a glance at what was
past; it was the present only that absorbed her; and even of the
present not more than a fraction lay before her attention--the wet
lawn, the brightening east, the cool air--those with the joy that had
come with the morning were enough.

* * * * *

Again came the long sigh behind her; and a moment afterwards there was
a step upon the floor, and Laurie himself stood by her. She glanced at
him sideways, wondering for an instant whether his mood was as hers;
and his grave, tired, boyish face was answer enough. He met her eyes,
and then again let his own stray out to the garden.

He was the first to speak.

"Maggie," he said, "I think we had best never speak of this again to
one another." She nodded, but he went on--

"I understand very little. I wish to understand no more. I shall ask
no questions, and nothing need be said to anybody. You agree?"

"I agree perfectly," she said.

"And not a word to my mother, of course."

"Of course not."

* * * * *

The two were silent again.

And now reality--or rather, the faculties of memory and consideration
by which reality is apprehended--were once more coming back to the
girl and beginning to stir in her mind. She began, gently now, and
without perturbation, to recall what had passed, the long crescendo of
the previous months, the gathering mutter of the spiritual storm that
had burst last night--even the roar and flare of the storm itself, and
the mad instinctive fight for the conscious life and identity of
herself through which she had struggled. And it seemed to her as if
the storm, like others in the material plane, had washed things clean
again, and discharged an oppression of which she had been but half
conscious. Neither was it herself alone who had emerged