But Maggie had not misunderstood.

“I can work,” she said.  “I can pay a little now.”

“No, no.  Never mind about that.  Keep it—­keep all you earn.”

“I can’t keep it.  I’ll pay you back again.  I’ll work my fingers to the bone.”

“Oh, not for me” he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go.

Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour.

“Yes,” she said, “for you.”

CHAPTER XXII

Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie’s door.  In justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the passionate, perverted creature.  And yet there was a sense in which Maggie’s betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent.  Majendie’s finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary taint.  He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst’s honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity.  His own experience helped him to the vision.  And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child, and feverish from her hurt.  He had asked her what she had wanted with Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was “to help him.”

He said to himself that he wouldn’t be in Gorst’s place for a good deal, to have that on his conscience.

As it happened, the prodigal’s conscience was by no means easy.  He called in Prior Street that evening to learn the result of his friend’s intervention.  He submitted humbly to Majendie’s judgment of his conduct.  He agreed that he had been a brute to Maggie, that he might certainly do worse than marry her, and that his best reason for not marrying her was his knowledge that Maggie was ten times too good for him.  He was only disposed to be critical of his friend’s diplomacy when he learned that Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford.  But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment of her fine renunciation.  He admitted that he had known all along that Maggie had her own high innocence.  And when he realised the extent to which Majendie had “got him out of it,” his conscience was roused by a salutary shock of shame.

But it was to Edith that he presented the perfection of his penitence.  From his stillness and abasement she gathered that, this time, her prodigal had fallen far.  That night, before his departure, he confirmed her sad suspicions.

“It’s awfully good of you,” he said stiffly, “to let me come again.”

“Good of me?  Charlie!” Her eyes and voice reproached him for this strained formality.

“Yes.  Mrs. Majendie’s perfectly right.  I’ve justified her bad opinion of me.”