III

She scarcely knew how it was that she found herself again in her

chair, with the figure seated opposite.

It seemed that the direct assault was useless. And indeed she was no

longer capable of making it. The nausea had returned, and with it a

sensation of weakness. Her knees still were lax and useless; and her

hand, as she turned it on the chair-arm, shook violently. Yet she had

a curious sense of irresponsibility: there was no longer any

terror--nothing but an overpowering weakness of reaction.

She sat back in silence for some minutes, looking now at the fire too,

now at the figure opposite, noticing, however, that the helplessness

seemed gone. His hands dangled no longer; he sat upright, his hands

clasped, yet with a curious look of stiffness and unnaturalness.

Once more she began deliberately to attempt to gather her forces; but

the will, it appeared, had lost its nervous grasp of the faculties. It

had no longer that quick grip and command with which she had begun.

Passivity rather than activity seemed her strength....

Then suddenly and, as it appeared, inevitably, without movement or

sound, she began internally to pray, closing her eyes, careless, and

indeed unfearing. It seemed her one hope. And behind the steady

movement of her will--sufficient at least to elicit acts of

petition--her intellect observed a thousand images and thoughts. She

perceived the silence of the house and of the breathless spring night

outside; she considered Mr. Cathcart in the inn across the road, Mrs.

Baxter upstairs: she contemplated the future as it would be on the

morrow--Easter Day, was it not?--the past, and scarcely at all the

present. She relinquished all plans, all intentions and hopes: she

leaned simply upon the supernatural, like a tired child, and looked at

pictures.

* * * * *

In remembering it all afterwards, she recalled to herself the fact

that this process of prayer seemed strangely tranquil; that there had

been in her a consciousness of rest and recuperation as marked as that

which a traveler feels who turns into a lighted house from a stormy

night. The presence of that other in the room was not even an

interruption; the nervous force that the other had generated just now

seemed harmless and ineffective. For a time, at least, that was so.

But there came a moment when it appeared as if her almost mechanical

and rhythmical action of internal effort began to grip something. It

was as when an engine after running free clenches itself again upon

some wheel or cog.

The moment she was aware of this, she opened her eyes; and saw that

the other was looking straight at her intently and questioningly. And

in that moment she perceived for the first time that her conflict lay,

not externally, as she had thought, but in some interior region of

which she was wholly ignorant. It was not by word or action, but by

something else which she only half understood that she was to

struggle....

She closed her eyes again with quite a new kind of determination. It

was not self-command that she needed, but a steady interior

concentration of forces.

She began again that resolute wordless play of the will--dismissing

with a series of efforts the intellectual images of thought--that play

of the will which, it seemed, had affected the boy opposite in a new

way. She had no idea of what the crisis would be, or how it would

come. She only saw that she had struck upon a new path that led

somewhere. She must follow it.

Some little sound roused her; she opened her eyes and looked up.

He had shifted his position, and for a moment her heart leapt with

hope. For he sat now leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and his

head in his hands, and in the shaded lamplight it seemed that he was

shaking.

She too moved, and the rustle of her dress seemed to reach him. He

glanced up, and before he dropped his head again she caught a clear

sight of his face. He was laughing, silently and overpoweringly,

without a sound....

For a moment the nausea seized her so fiercely that she gasped,

catching at her throat; and she stared at that bowed head and shaking

shoulders with a horror that she had not felt before. The laughter was

worse than all: and it was a little while before she perceived its

unreality. It was like a laughing machine. And the silence of it gave

it a peculiar touch.

She wrestled with herself, driving down the despair that was on

her. Courage and love.

Again she leaned back without speaking, closing her eyes to shut out

the terror, and began desperately and resolutely to bend her will

again to the task.

Again a little sound disturbed her.

Once more he had shifted his position, and was looking straight at her

with a curious air of detached interest. His face looked almost

natural, though it was still flushed with that forced laughter; but

the mirth itself was gone. Then he spoke abruptly and sharply, in the

tone of a man who speaks to a tiresome child; and a little

conversation followed, in which she found herself taking a part, as in

an unnatural dream.

"You had better take care," he said.

"I am not afraid."

"Well--I have warned you. It is at your own risk. What are you doing?"

"I am praying."

"I thought so.... Well, you had better take care."

She nodded at him; closed her eyes once more with new confidence, and

set to work.

After that a series of little scenes followed, of which, a few days

later, she could only give a disconnected account.

She had heard the locking of the front door a long while ago; and she

knew that the household was gone to bed. It was then that she realized

how long the struggle would be. But the next incident was marked in

her memory by her hearing the tall clock in the silent hall outside

beat one. It was immediately after this that he spoke once more.

"I have stood it long enough," he said, in that same abrupt manner.

She opened her eyes.

"You are still praying?" he said.

She nodded.

He got up without a word and came over to her, leaning forward with

his hands on his knees to peer into her face. Again, to her

astonishment, she was not terrified. She just waited, looking narrowly

at the strange person who looked through Laurie's eyes and spoke

through his mouth. It was all as unreal as a fantastic dream. It

seemed like some abominable game or drama that had to be gone through.

"And you mean to go on praying?"

"Yes."

"Do you think it's the slightest use?"

"Yes."

He smiled unnaturally, as if the muscles of his mouth were not

perfectly obedient.

"Well, I have warned you," he said.

Then he turned, went back to his couch, and this time lay down on it

flat, turning over on his side, away from her, as if to sleep. He

settled himself there like a dog. She looked at him a moment; then

closed her eyes and began again.

* * * * *

Five minutes later she understood.

The first symptom of which she was aware was a powerlessness to

formulate her prayers. Up to that point she had leaned, as has been

said, on an enormous Power external to herself, yet approached by an

interior way. Now it required an effort of the will to hold to that

Power at all. In terms of space, let it be said that she had rested,

like a child in the dark, upon Something that sustained her: now she

was aware that it no longer sustained her; but that it needed a strong

continuous effort to apprehend it at all. There was still the dark

about her; but it was of a different quality--it cannot be expressed

otherwise--it was as the darkness of an unknown gulf compared to the

darkness of a familiar room. It was of such a nature that space and

form seemed meaningless....

The next symptom was a sense of terror, comparable only to that which

she had succeeded in crushing down as she stood on the stairs four or

five hours before. That, however, had been external to her; she had

entered it. Now it had entered her, and lay, heavy as pitch, upon the

very springs of her interior life. It was terror of something to come.

That which it heralded was not yet come: but it was approaching.

The third symptom was the approach itself--swift and silent, like the

running of a bear; so swift that it was upon her through the dark

before she could stir or act. It came upon her, in a flash at the

last; and she understood the whole secret.

It is possible only to describe it as, afterwards, she described it

herself. The powerlessness and the terror were no more than the

far-off effect of its approach; the Thing itself was the center.

Of that realm of being from which it came she had no previous

conception: she had known evil only in its effects--in sins of herself

and others--known it as a man passing through a hospital ward sees

flushed or pale faces, or bandaged wounds. Now she caught some glimpse

of its essence, in the atmosphere of this bear-like thing that was

upon her. As aches and pains are to Death, so were sins to this

Personality--symptoms, premonitions, causes, but not Itself. And she

was aware that the Thing had come from a spiritual distance so

unthinkable and immeasurable, that the very word distance meant

little.

Of the Presence itself and its mode she could use nothing better than

metaphors. But those to whom she spoke were given to understand that

it was not this or that faculty of her being that, so to speak, pushed

against it; but that her entire being was saturated so entirely, that

it was but just possible to distinguish her inmost self from it. The

understanding no longer moved; the emotions no longer rebelled; memory

simply ceased. Yet through the worst there remained one minute,

infinitesimally small spark of identity that maintained "I am I; and I

am not that." There was no analysis or consideration; scarcely even a

sense of disgust. In fact for a while there was a period when to that

tiny spot of identity it appeared that it would be an incalculable

relief to cease from striving, and to let self itself be merged in

that Personality so amazingly strong and compelling, that had

precipitated itself upon the rest.... Relief? Certainly. For though

emotion as most men know it was crushed out--that emotion stirred by

human love or hatred--there remained an instinct which strove, which,

by one long continuous tension, maintained itself in being.

For the malignity of the thing was overwhelming. It was not mere

pressure; it had a character of its own for which the girl afterwards

had no words. She could only say that, so far from being negation, or

emptiness, or non-being, it had an air, hot as flame, black as pitch,

and hard as iron.

That then was the situation for a time which she could only afterwards

reckon by guesswork; there was no development or movement--no

measurable incidents; there was but the state that remained poised;

below all those comparatively superficial faculties with which men in

general carry on their affairs--that state in which two Personalities

faced one another, welded together in a grip that lay on the very

brink of fusion....

_Chapter XVIII_

I

The cocks were crowing from the yards behind the village when Maggie

opened her eyes, clear shrill music, answered from the hill as by

their echoes, and the yews outside were alive with the dawn-chirping

of the sparrows.

She lay there quite quietly, watching under her tired eyelids, through

the still unshuttered windows, the splendid glow, seen behind the

twisted stems in front and the slender fairy forest of birches on the

further side of the garden. Immediately outside the window lay the

path, deep in yew-needles, the ground-ivy beyond, and the wet lawn

glistening in the strange mystical light of morning.

She had no need to remember or consider. She knew every step and

process of the night. That was Laurie who lay opposite in a deep

sleep, his head on his arm, breathing deeply and regularly; and this

was the little smoking-room where she had seen the cigarettes laid

ready against his coming, last night.

There was still a log just alight on the hearth, she noticed. She got

out of her chair, softly and stiffly, for she felt intolerably languid

and tired. Besides, she must not disturb the boy. So she went down on

her knees, and, with infinite craft, picked out a coal or two from the

fender and dropped them neatly into the core of red-heat that still

smoldered. But a fragment of wood detached itself and fell with a

sharp sound; and she knew, even without turning her head, that the boy

had awakened. There was a faint inarticulate murmur, a rustle and a

long sigh.

Then she turned round.

Laurie was lying on his back, his arms clasped behind his head,

looking at her with a quiet meditative air. He appeared no more

astonished or perplexed than herself. He was a little white-looking

and tired in the light of dawn, but his eyes were bright and sure.

She rose from her knees again, still silent, and stood looking down on

him, and he looked back at her. There was no need of speech. It was

one of those moments in which one does not even say that there are no

words to use; one just regards the thing, like a stretch of open

country. It is contemplation, not comment, that is needed.

Her eyes wandered away presently, with the same tranquility, to the

brightening garden outside; and her slowly awakening mind, expanding

within, sent up a little scrap of quotation to be answered.

"While it was yet early ... there came to the sepulcher." How did it

run? "Mary..." Then she spoke.

"It is Easter Day, Laurie."

The boy nodded gently; and she saw his eyes slowly closing once more;

he was not yet half awake. So she went past him on tiptoe to the

window, turned the handle, and opened the white tall framework-like

door. A gush of air, sweet as wine, laden with the smell of dew and

spring flowers and wet lawns, stole in to meet her; and a blackbird,

in the shrubbery across the garden, broke into song, interrupted

himself, chattered melodiously, and scurried 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 into this

"clear shining after rain"; but the boy that stood by her seemed to

her to share in her joy. They stood here together now in a spiritual

garden, of which this lovely morning was no more than a clumsy

translation into another tongue. There stirred an air about them which

was as wine to the soul, a coolness and clearness that was beyond

thought, in a radiance that shone through all that was bathed within

it, as sunlight that filtered through water. She perceived then that

the experience had been an initiation for them both, that here they

stood, one by the other, each transparent to the other, or, at least,

he transparent to her; and she wondered, not whether he would see it

as she did, for of that she was confident, but when. For this space of

silence she perceived him through and through, and understood that

perception was everything. She saw the flaws in him as plainly as in

herself, the cracks in the crystal; yet these did not matter, for the

crystal was crystal....

So she waited, confident, until he should understand it too.

"But that is only one fraction of what is in my mind--" He broke off.

Then for the first time since she had opened her eyes just now her

heart began to beat. That which had lain hidden for so long--that

which she had crushed down under stone and seal and bidden lie

still--yet that which had held her resolute, all unknown to herself,

through the night that was gone--once more asserted itself and waited

for liberation.

"Yet how dare I--" began Laurie.

Again she glanced at him, terrified lest that which was in her heart

should declare itself too plainly by eyes and lips; and she saw how he

still looked across the garden, yet seeing nothing but his own thought

written there against the glory of sky and leaf and grass. His face

caught the splendor from the east, and she saw in it the lines that

would tell always of the anguish through which he was come; and again

the terror in her heart leapt to the other side, in spite of her

confidence, and bade her fear lest through some mistake, some

conventional shame, he should say no more.

Then he turned his troubled eyes and looked her in the face, and as he

looked the trouble cleared.

"Why--Maggie!" he said.

_Epilogue_

"The worst of it all is," said Maggie, four months later, to a very

patient female friend who adored her, and was her _confidante_ just

then--"the worst of it is that I'm not in the least sure of what it is

that I believe even now."

"Tell me, dear," said the girl.

* * * * *

The two were sitting out in a delightfully contrived retreat cut out

at the lower end of the double hedge. Above them and on two sides rose

masses of August greenery, hazel and beech, as close as the roof and

walls of a summer-house: the long path ran in green gloom up to the

old brick steps beneath the yews: and before the two girls rested the

pleasant apparatus of tea--silver, china and damask, all the more

delightful from its barbaric contrast with its surroundings.

Maggie looked marvelously well, considering the nervous strain that

had come upon her about Easter-time. She had collapsed altogether, it

seemed, in Easter week itself, and had been for a long rest--one at

her own dear French convent until a week ago, being entirely forbidden

by the nuns to speak of her experiences at all, so soon as they had

heard the rough outline. Mrs. Baxter had spent the time in rather

melancholy travel on the Continent, and was coming back this evening.

"It seems to me now exactly like a very bad dream," said Maggie

pensively, beginning to measure in the tea with a small silver scoop.

"Oh! Mabel; may I tell you exactly what is in my mind: and then we

won't talk of it any more at all?"

"Oh! do," said the girl, with a little comfortable movement.

When the tea had been poured out and the plates set ready to hand,

Maggie began.

* * * * *

"It seems perfectly dreadful of me to have any doubts at all, after all

this; but ... but you don't know how queer it seems. There's a kind of

thick hedge--" she waved a hand illustratively to the hazels beside

her--"a kind of thick hedge between me and Easter--I suppose it's the

illness: the nuns tell me so. Well, it's like that. I can see myself,

and Laurie, and Mr. Cathcart, and all the rest of them, like figures

moving beyond; and they all seem to me to be behaving rather madly, as

if they saw something that I can't see.... Oh! it's hopeless....

"Well, the first theory I have is that these little figures, myself

included, really see something that I can't now: that there really was

something or somebody, which makes them dance about like that. (Yes:

that's not grammar; but you understand, don't you?) Well, I'll come

back to that presently.

"And my next theory is this ... is this"--Maggie sipped her tea

meditatively--"my next theory is that the whole thing was simple

imagination, or, rather, imagination acting upon a few little facts

and coincidences, and perhaps a little fraud too. Do you know the way,

if you're jealous or irritable, the way in which everything seems to

fit in? Every single word the person you're suspicious of utters all

fits in and corroborates your idea. It isn't mere imagination: you

have real facts, of a kind; but what's the matter is that you choose

to take the facts in one way and not another. You select and arrange

until the thing is perfectly convincing. And yet, you know, in nine

cases out of ten it's simply a lie...! Oh! I can't explain all the

things, certainly. I can't explain, for instance, the pencil

affair--when it stood up on end before Laurie's eyes; that is, if it

did really stand up at all. He says himself that the whole thing seems

rather dim now, as if he had seen it in a very vivid dream. (Have one

of these sugar things?)

"Then there are the appearances Laurie saw; and the extraordinary

effect they finally had upon him. Oh! yes; at the time, on the night

of Easter Eve, I mean, I was absolutely certain that the thing was

real, that he was actually obsessed, that the thing--the Personality,

I mean--came at me instead, and that somehow I won. Mr. Cathcart tells

me I'm right--Well; I'll come to that presently. But if it didn't

happen, I certainly can't explain what did; but there are a good many

things one can't explain; and yet one doesn't instantly rush to the

conclusion that they're done by the devil. People say that we know

very little indeed about the inner working of our own selves. There's

instinct, for instance. We know nothing about that except that it is

so. 'Inherited experience' is only rather a clumsy phrase--a piece of

paper gummed up to cover a crack in the wall.

"And that brings me to my third theory."

Maggie poured out for herself a second cup of tea.

"My third theory I'm rather vague about, altogether. And yet I see

quite well that it may be the true one. (Please don't interrupt till

I've quite done.)

"We've got in us certain powers that we don't understand at all. For

instance, there's thought-projection. There's not a shadow of doubt

that that is so. I can sit here and send you a message of what I'm

thinking about--oh! vaguely, of course. It's another form of what we

mean by Sympathy and Intuition. Well, you know, some people think that

haunted houses can be explained by this. When the murder is going on,

the murderer and the murdered person are probably fearfully

excited--anger, fear, and so on. That means that their whole being is

stirred up right to the bottom, and that their hidden powers are

frightfully active. Well, the idea is that these hidden powers are

almost like acids, or gas--Hudson tells us all about that--and that

they can actually stamp themselves upon the room to such a degree that

when a sympathetic person comes in, years afterwards, perhaps, he sees

the whole thing just as it happened. It acts upon his mind first, of

course, and then outwards through the senses--just the reverse order

to that in which we generally see things.

"Well--that's only an illustration. Now my idea is this: How do we

know whether all the things that happened, from the pencil and the

rappings and the automatic writing, right up to the appearances Laurie

saw, were not just the result of these inner powers.... Look here.

When one person projects his thought to another it arrives generally

like a very faint phantom of the thing he's thinking about. If I'm

thinking of the ace of hearts, you see a white rectangle with a red

spot in the middle. See? Well, multiply all that a hundred times, and

one can just see how it might be possible that the thought of ... of

Mr. Vincent and Laurie together might produce a kind of unreal phantom

that could even be touched, perhaps.... Oh! I don't know."

Maggie paused. The girl at her side gave an encouraging murmur.

"Well--that's about all," said Maggie slowly.

"But you haven't--"

"Why, how stupid! Yes: the first theory.... Now that just shows how

unreal it is to me now. I'd forgotten it.

"Well, the first theory, my dear brethren, divides itself into two

heads--first the theory of the spiritualists, secondly the theory of

Mr. Cathcart. (He's a dear, Mabel, even though I don't believe one

word he says.)

"Well, the spiritualist theory seems to me simple R.-O.-T.--rot. Mr.

Vincent, Mrs. Stapleton, and the rest, really think that the souls of

people actually come back and do these things; that it was, really and

truly, poor dear Amy Nugent who led Laurie such a dance. I'm quite,

quite certain that that's not true whatever else is.... Yes, I'll come

to the coincidences presently. But how can it possibly be that Amy

should come back and do these things, and hurt Laurie so horribly?

Why, she couldn't if she tried. My dear, to be quite frank, she was a

very common little thing: and, besides, she wouldn't have hurt a hair

of his head.

"Now for Mr. Cathcart."

There was a long pause. A small cat stepped out suddenly from the

hazel tangle behind and eyed the two girls. Then, quite noiselessly,

as it caught Maggie's eye, it opened its mouth in a pathetic curve

intended to represent, an appeal.

"You darling!" cried Maggie suddenly; seized a saucer, filled it with

milk, and set it on the ground. The small cat stepped daintily down,

and set to work.

"Yes?" said the other girl tentatively.

"Oh! Mr. Cathcart.... Well, I must say that his theory fits in with

what Father Mahon says. But, you know, theology doesn't say that this

or that particular thing is the devil, or has actually happened in any

given instance--only that, if it really does happen, it is the devil.

Well, this is Mr. Cathcart's idea. It's a long story: you mustn't

mind.

"First, he believes in the devil in quite an extraordinary way.... Oh!

yes, I know we do too; but it's so very real indeed with him. He

believes that the air is simply thick with them, all doing their very

utmost to get hold of human beings. Yes, I suppose we do believe that

too; but I expect that since there are such a quantity of things--like

bad dreams--that we used to think were the devil, and now only turn

out to be indigestion, that we're rather too skeptical. Well, Mr.

Cathcart believes both in indigestion, so to speak, _and_ the devil.

He believes that those evil spirits are at us all the time, trying to

get in at any crack they can find--that in one person they produce

lunacy--I must say it seems to me rather odd the way in which lunatics

so very often become horribly blasphemous and things like that--and in

another just shattered nerves, and so on. They take advantage, he

says, of any weak spot anywhere.

"Now one of the easiest ways of all is through spiritualism.

Spiritualism is wrong--we know that well enough; it is wrong because

it's trying to live a life and find out things that are beyond us at

present. It's 'wrong' on the very lowest estimate, because it's

outraging our human nature. Yes, Mabel, that's his phrase. Good

intentions, therefore, don't protect us in the least. To go to

_séances_ with good intentions is like ... like ... holding a

smoking-concert in a powder-magazine on behalf of an orphan asylum.

It's not the least protection--I'm not being profane, my dear--it's

not the least protection to open the concert with prayer. We've got no

business there at all. So we're blown up just the same.

"The danger...? Oh! the danger's this, Mr. Cathcart says. At

_séances_, if they're genuine, and with automatic handwriting and all

the rest, you deliberately approach those powers in a friendly way,

and by the sort of passivity which you've got to get yourself into,

you open yourself as widely as possible to their entrance. Very often

they can't get in; and then you're only bothered. But sometimes they

can, and then you're done. It's particularly hard to get them out

again.

"Now, of course, no one in his senses--especially decent people--would

dream of doing all this if he knew what it all meant. So these

creatures, whatever they may be, always pretend to be somebody else.

They're very sharp: they can pick up all kinds of odds and ends,

little tricks, and little facts; and so, with these, they impersonate

someone whom the inquirer's very fond of; and they say all sorts of

pious, happy little things at first in order to lead them on. So they

go on for a long time saying that religion's quite true. (By the way,

it's rather too odd the way in which the Catholic Church seems the one

thing they don't like! You can be almost anything else, if you're a

spiritualist; but you can't be a Catholic.) Generally, though, they

tell you to say your prayers and sing hymns. (Father Mahon the other

day, when I was arguing with him about having some hymns in church,

said that heretics always went in for hymns!) And so you go on. Then

they begin to hint that religion's not worth much; and then they

attack morals. Mr. Cathcart wouldn't tell me about that; but he said

it got just as bad as it could be, if you didn't take care."

Maggie paused again, looking rather serious. Her voice had risen a

little, and a new color had come to her face as she talked. She

stooped to pick up the saucer.

"Dearest, had you better--"

"Oh! yes: I've just about done," said Maggie briskly. "There's hardly

any more. Well, there's the idea. They want to get possession of human

beings and move them, so they start like that.

"Well; that's what Mr. Cathcart says happened to Laurie. One of those

Beasts came and impersonated poor Amy. He picked up certain things

about her--her appearance, her trick of stammering, and of playing

with her fingers, and about her grave and so on: and then, finally,

made his appearance in her shape."

"I don't understand about that," murmured the girl.

"Oh! my dear, I can't bother about that now. There's a lot about

astral substance, and so on. Besides, this is only what Mr. Cathcart

says. As I told you, I'm not at all sure that I believe one word of

it. But that's his idea."

Maggie stopped again suddenly, and leaned back, staring out at the

luminous green roof of hazels above her. The small cat could be

discerned half-way up the leafy tunnel swaying its body in preparation

for a pounce, while overhead sounded an agitated twittering. Mabel

seized a pebble, and threw it with such success that the swaying

stopped, and a reproachful cat-face looked round at her.

"There!" said Mabel comfortably; and then, "Well, what do you really

think?"

Maggie smiled reflectively.

"That's exactly what I don't know myself in the very least. As I said,

all this seems to me more like a dream--and a very bad one. I think

it's the ... the nastiest thing," she added vindictively, "that I've

ever come across; I don't want to hear one word more about it as long

as I live."

"But--"

"Oh, my dear, why can't we be all just sensible and normal? I love

doing just ordinary little things--the garden, and the chickens, and

the cat and dog and complaining to the butcher. I cannot imagine what

anybody wants with anything else. Yes; I suppose I do, in a sort of

way, believe Mr. Cathcart. It seems to me, granted the spiritual world

at all--which, naturally, I do grant--far the most intelligent

explanation. It seems to me, intellectually, far the most broad-minded

explanation; because it really does take in all the facts--if they are

facts--and accounts for them reasonably. Whereas the subjective--self

business--oh, it's frightfully clever and ingenious--but it does

assume such a very great deal. It seems to me rather like the people

who say that electricity accounts for everything--electricity! And as

for the imagination theory--well, that's what appeals to me now,

emotionally--because I happen to be in the chickens and butcher mood;

but it doesn't in the least convince me. Yes; I suppose Mr. Cathcart's

theory is the one I ought to believe, and, in a way, the one I do

believe; but that doesn't in the least prevent me from feeling it

extraordinarily unreal and impossible. Anyhow, it doesn't matter

much."

Again she leaned back comfortably, smiling to herself, and there was a

long silence.

It was a divinely beautiful August evening. From where they sat little

could be seen except the long vista of the path, arched with hazels,

whence the cat had now disappeared, ending in three old brick steps,

wide and flat, lichened and mossed, set about with flower-pots and

leading up to the yew walk. But the whole air was full of summer sound

and life and scent, heavy and redolent, streaming in from the old

box-lined kitchen-garden on their right beyond the hedge and from the

orchard on the left. It was the kind of atmosphere suggesting Nature

in her most sensible mood, full-blooded, normal, perfectly fulfilling

her own vocation; utterly unmystical, except by very subtle

interpretation; unsuggestive, since she was already saying all that

could be said, and following out every principle by which she lived to

the furthest confine of its contents. It presented the same kind of

rounded-off completion and satisfactoriness as that suggested by an

entirely sensuous and comfortable person. There were no corners in it,

no vistas hinting at anything except at some perfectly normal lawn or

set garden, no mystery, no implication of any other theory or glimpse

of theory except that which itself proclaimed.

Something of its air seemed now to breathe in Maggie's expression of

contentment, as she smiled softly and happily, clasping her arms

behind her head. She looked perfectly charming, thought Mabel; and she

laid a hand delicately on her friend's knee, as if to share in the

satisfaction--to verify it by participation, so to speak.

"It doesn't seem to have done you much harm," she said.

"No, thank you; I'm extremely well and very content. I've looked

through the door once, without in the least wishing to; and I don't in

the least want to look again. It's not a nice view."

"But about--er--religion," said the younger girl rather awkwardly.

"Oh! religion's all right," said Maggie. "The Church gives me just as

much of all that as is good for me; and, for the rest, just tells me

to be quiet and not bother--above all, not to peep or pry. Listeners

hear no good of themselves: and I suppose that's true of the other

senses too. At any rate, I'm going to do my best to mind nothing

except my own business."

"Isn't that rather unenterprising?"

"Certainly it is; that's why I like it.... Oh! Mabel, I do want to be

so absolutely ordinary all the rest of my life. It's so extremely rare

and original, you know. Didn't somebody say that there was nothing so

uncommon as common sense? Well, that's what I'm going to be. A genius!

Don't you understand?--the kind that is an infinite capacity for

taking pains, not the other sort."

"What is the other sort?"

"Why, an infinite capacity for doing without them. Like Wagner, you

know. Well, I wish to be the Bach sort--the kind of thing that anyone

ought to be able to do--only they can't."

Mabel smiled doubtfully.

"Lady Laura was saying--" she began presently.

Maggie's face turned suddenly severe.

"I don't wish to hear one word."

"But she's given it up," cried the girl. "She's given it up."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Maggie judicially. "And I hope now that

she'll spend the rest of her days in sackcloth--with a scourge," she

added. "Oh, did I tell you about Mrs. Nugent?"

"About the evening Laurie came home? Yes."

"Well, that's all right. The poor old dear got all sorts of things on

her mind, when it leaked out. But I talked to her, and we went up

together and put flowers on the grave, and I said I'd have a mass said

for Amy, though I'm sure she doesn't require one. The poor darling!

But ... but ... (don't think me brutal, please) _how_ providential her

death was! Just think!"

"Mrs. Baxter's coming home by the 6.10, isn't she?"

Maggie nodded.

"Yes; but you know you mustn't say a word to her about all this. In

fact she won't have it. She's perfectly convinced that Laurie

overworked himself--Laurie, overworked!--and that that was just all

that was the matter with him. Auntie's what's called a sensible woman,

you know, and I must say it's rather restful. It's what I want to be;

but it's a far-off aspiration, I'm afraid, though I'm nearer it than I

was."

"You mean she doesn't think anything odd happened at all?"

"Just so. Nothing at all odd. All very natural. Oh, by the way, Laurie

swears he never put his nose inside her room that night, but I'm

absolutely certain he did, and didn't know it."

"Where is Mr. Lawrence?"

"Auntie made him go abroad."

"And when does he come back?"

There was a perceptible pause.

"Mr. Lawrence comes back on Saturday evening," said Maggie

deliberately.