There were of course times of sunshine in those two days; moments when, in the realisation of Margaret’s sweetness and her love for me, all doubts were dissipated like morning mist before the sun.  But the balance of the time—­and an overwhelming balance it was—­gloom hung over me like a pall.  The hour, in whose coming I had acquiesced, was approaching so quickly and was already so near that the sense of finality was bearing upon me!  The issue was perhaps life or death to any of us; but for this we were all prepared.  Margaret and I were one as to the risk.  The question of the moral aspect of the case, which involved the religious belief in which I had been reared, was not one to trouble me; for the issues, and the causes that lay behind them, were not within my power even to comprehend.  The doubt of the success of the Great Experiment was such a doubt as exists in all enterprises which have great possibilities.  To me, whose life was passed in a series of intellectual struggles, this form of doubt was a stimulus, rather than deterrent.  What then was it that made for me a trouble, which became an anguish when my thoughts dwelt long on it?

I was beginning to doubt Margaret!

What it was that I doubted I knew not.  It was not her love, or her honour, or her truth, or her kindness, or her zeal.  What then was it?

It was herself!

Margaret was changing!  At times during the past few days I had hardly known her as the same girl whom I had met at the picnic, and whose vigils I had shared in the sick-room of her father.  Then, even in her moments of greatest sorrow or fright or anxiety, she was all life and thought and keenness.  Now she was generally distraite, and at times in a sort of negative condition as though her mind—­her very being—­was not present.  At such moments she would have full possession of observation and memory.  She would know and remember all that was going on, and had gone on around her; but her coming back to her old self had to me something the sensation of a new person coming into the room.  Up to the time of leaving London I had been content whenever she was present.  I had over me that delicious sense of security which comes with the consciousness that love is mutual.  But now doubt had taken its place.  I never knew whether the personality present was my Margaret—­the old Margaret whom I had loved at the first glance—­or the other new Margaret, whom I hardly understood, and whose intellectual aloofness made an impalpable barrier between us.  Sometimes she would become, as it were, awake all at once.  At such times, though she would say to me sweet and pleasant things which she had often said before, she would seem most unlike herself.  It was almost as if she was speaking parrot-like or at dictation of one who could read words or acts, but not thoughts.  After one or two experiences of this kind, my own doubting began to make a barrier; for I could not speak with the ease and freedom which were usual to me.  And so hour by hour we drifted apart.  Were it not for the few odd moments when the old Margaret was back with me full of her charm I do not know what would have happened.  As it was, each such moment gave me a fresh start and kept my love from changing.