"It's in you, and you won't escape it. I thought it was I who was to
bring you to Him, but I was going too fast. The Lord has His own
time. You'll come to Him afterwards."
"Oh," cried Maggie. "I'm so glad I'm going somewhere where it won't
be always religion, where they'll think of something else than the
Lord and His Coming. I want real life, banks and motor-cars and
shops and clothes and work . . ."
She stopped suddenly.
Aunt Anne was doing what Maggie had never seen her do before, even
in the worst bouts of her pain--she was crying . . . cold solitary
lonely tears that crept slowly, reluctantly down her thin cheeks.
"I meant to do well. In everything I have done ill . . . Everything
has failed in my hands--"
Once again, as long before at St. Dreot's, Maggie could do nothing.
There was a long miserable silence, then Aunt Anne got up and went
away.
Next day Katherine came in a beautiful motor-car to fetch Maggie.
Maggie had packed her few things. Bound her neck next her skin was
the ring with three pearls . . .
She said good-bye to the house: her bedroom beneath which the motor-
omnibuses clanged, the sitting-room with the family group, the
passage with the Armed Men, the dark hall with the green baize door
.
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