“I don’t want to go to places,” she said.  “I want to send it all to you.”

He lapsed again into his formula.  “There really is no reason why you should.”

“I want to.  That’s a reason, isn’t it?” said she.  She said it shyly, tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant’s metaphysics.  There was no assurance in her tone, nothing to remind him that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power.

“Well—­” He straightened himself stiffly for departure.

“Are you going?” she said.

“I must.”

“Will you—­come again?”

“Yes, I’ll come, if you want me.”

He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked.  A pang of compassion went through him.  And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor.  It recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure.

It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him, even poor, perverted Maggie.

Maggie said nothing.  But the flame rose in her face.

Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door.  “What’s been the matter with her?” he asked.

“I don’t rightly know, sir.  But between you and me, I think she’s fretted herself ill.”

“Well, you’ve got to see that she doesn’t fret, that’s all.”

He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance.

That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending Maggie, and Maggie’s beautiful and innocent art.

CHAPTER XXIV

As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners.  Her evenings would have been intolerable without them.  Edith no longer needed her.  Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie.  The prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned.  He was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer loss of her that had to be.  They felt that his brilliant presence kept the invading darkness from her door.

Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with them.

Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband’s house since her child had been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put to bed at six o’clock, Peggy’s mother was once more alien and alone.  It was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she moved once more superbly in her superior circle.  She was proud of her circle.