I want
your help."
Martin took his father's hand, felt how dry and hot and feverish it
was.
"I'll be with you," he said. "I promise that. Don't you listen to
what any one says. I won't leave you." He would like to have gone on
and asked other questions, but the old man seemed so worn out and
exhausted that he was afraid of distressing him, so he just sat
there, his hands on his shoulders, and suddenly the white head
nodded, the beard sank over the breast and huddled up in the chair
as though life itself had left him; the old man slept.
During the next four days Martin and Maggie corresponded through the
fair hands of Jane. He wrote only short letters, and over them he
struggled. He seemed to see Maggie through a tangled mist of persons
and motives and intentions. He could not get at the real Maggie at
all, he could not even get at his real feelings about her. He knew
that these letters were not enough for her, he could feel behind her
own a longing for something from him more definite, something that
would bring her closer to him. He was haunted by his picture of her
sitting in that dismal house, a prisoner, waiting for him, and at
last, at the end of the four days, he felt that he must, in some way
or other see her.
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