Staring into the dark wood
she saw it all. She could completely capture him by responding to
his passion. Without that she was too queer, too untidy, too
undisciplined, to hold him at all. But she could not lie, she could
not pretend.
She kissed him.
"Paul, let's be friends, then. Splendid friends. Oh! we will be
happy!"
But as he kissed her she knew that she had lost him.
Paul was very kind to her during their stay at Little Harben, but
they recovered none of that old friendship that had been theirs
before they married. Too many things were now between them. By the
end of that month Maggie longed to return to Skeaton. It was not
only that she felt crushed and choked by the strangling green that
hemmed in the old house--the weeds and the trees, and the plants
seemed to draw in the night closer and closer about the windows and
doors--but also solitude with Paul was revealing to her, in a
ruthless, cruel manner, his weaknesses. They were none of them,
perhaps, very terrible, but she did not wish to see them. She would
like to shut her eyes to them all. If she lost that friendly
kindness that she felt for him then indeed she had lost everything.
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