The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable master of commercial detail.

The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business. Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age.

To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently required to give his best attention.

The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his reform must be regarded as the price of his admission.

For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred, the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculiarly dark and threatening.

In the spring of the year they gathered to their climax. One afternoon Gorst appeared in Majendie's office, sat down with a stricken air, and appealed to his friend to help him out.

"I thought you were out," said Majendie.

"So I am. It's because I'm so well out that I'm in for it. Evans's have turned her off. She's down on her luck—and—well—you see, now she wants me to marry her."

"I see. Well—"

"Well, of course I can't. Maggie's a dear little thing, but—you see—I'm not the first."

"You're sure of that?"

"Certain. She confessed, poor girl. Besides, I knew it. I'm not a brute. I'd marry her if I'd been the first and only one. I'd marry her if I were sure I'd be the last. I'd marry her, as it is, if I cared enough for her. Always provided I could keep her. But you know—"

"You don't care and you can't keep her. What are you going to do for her?"

Gorst in his anguish glared at Majendie.

"I can't do anything. That's the damnedest part of it. I'm simply cleaned out, till I get a berth somewhere."

Majendie looked grave. This time the prodigal had devoured his living. "You're going to leave her there, then. Is that it?"

"No, it isn't. There's another fellow who'd marry her, if she'd have him, but she won't. That's it."

"Because she's fond of you, I suppose?"

"Oh, I don't know about being fond," said Gorst sulkily. "She's fond of anybody."

"And what do you want me to do?"

"I'd be awfully glad if you'd go and see her."

"See her?"

"Yes, and explain the situation. I can't. She won't let me. She goes mad when I try. She keeps on worrying at it from morning to night. When I don't go, she writes. And it knocks me all to pieces."

"If she's that sort, what good do you suppose I'll do by seeing her?"

"Oh, she'll listen to reason from any one but me. And there are things you can say to her that I can't. I say, will you?"

"I will if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It never does, you know. Where does the woman live?"

He took down the address on the visiting-card that Gorst gave him.

Between six and seven that evening he presented himself at one of many tiny, two-storied, red brick and stucco houses that stood in a long flat street, each with a narrow mat of grass laid before its bay-window. It was the new quarter of the respectable milliners and clerks; and Majendie gathered that the prodigal had taken some pains to lodge his Maggie with decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be possible, given the complete rupture of their relations.

A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again.

Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach.

The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely embarrassed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see anybody."

He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it.

Then Maggie came to him.

He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable grace.

He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost (but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him, preposterously, of Anne. The likeness bothered him, till he discovered that it lay in that trick of the lifted lip. But the small charm that was so brief and divine an accident in Anne was perpetual in Maggie. He thought he should get tired of it in time.

Maggie had been crying. Her sobs had left her lips still parted; her eyelids were swollen; there were little ashen shades and rosy flecks all over her pretty face. Her diminutive muslin handkerchief was limp with her tears. As he looked at her he realised that he had a painful and disgusting task before him, and that there would be no intelligence in the girl to help him out.

He bade her sit down; for poor Maggie stood before him humbly. He told her briefly that his friend, Mr. Gorst, had asked him to explain things to her, and he was beginning to explain them, very gently, when Maggie cut him short.

"It's not that I want to be married," she said sadly. "Mr. Mumford would marry me."

"Well—then—" he suggested, but Maggie shook her head. "Isn't he nice to you, Mr. Mumford?"

"He's nice enough. But I can't marry 'im. I won't. I don't love 'im. I can't—Mr. Magendy—because of Charlie."

She looked at him as if she thought he would compel her to marry Mr. Mumford.

"Oh dear—" said Maggie, surprised at herself, as she began to cry again.

She pressed the little muslin handkerchief to her eyes; not making a show of her grief; but furtive, rather, and ashamed.

And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out, fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had followed; that was all. Her brain had been passive in her sad affairs. Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only felt.

"See here," he said. "Charlie can't marry you. He can't marry anybody."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, he's too poor."

"I know he's poor."

"And you wouldn't be happy if he did marry you. He couldn't make you happy."

"I'd be unhappy, then."

"Yes. And he'd be unhappy, too. Is that what you want?"

"No—no—no! You don't understand."

"I'll try to. What do you want? Tell me."

"To help him."

"You can't help him," he said softly.

"I couldn't help him if 'e was rich. I can help him if he's poor."

He smiled. "How do you make that out, Maggie?"

"Well—he ought to marry a lady, I know. But he can't marry a lady. She'd cost him pounds and pounds. If he married me I'd cost him nothing. I'd work for him."

Majendie was startled at this reasoning. Maggie was more intelligent than he had thought.

She went on. "I can cook, I can do housework, I can sew. I'm learning dressmaking. Look—" She held up a coarse lining she had been stitching at when he came. From its appearance he judged that Maggie was as yet a novice in her art.

"I'd work my fingers to the bone for him."

"And you think he'd be happy seeing you do that? A gentleman can't let his wife work for him. He has to work for her." He paused. "And there's another reason, Maggie, why he can't marry you."

Maggie's head drooped. "I know," she said. "But I thought—if he was poor—he wouldn't mind so much. They don't, sometimes."

"I don't think you quite know what I mean."

"I do. You mean he's afraid. He won't trust me. He doesn't think I'm very good. But I would be—if he married me—I would—I would indeed."

"Of course you would. Whatever happens you're going to be good. That wasn't what I meant by the other reason."

Her face flamed. "Has he left off caring for me?"

He was silent, and the flame died in her face.

"Does he care for somebody else?"

"It would be better for you if you could think so."

"I know," she said; "it's the lady he used to send flowers to. I thought it was all right. I thought it was funerals."

She sat very still, taking it in.

"Is he going to marry her?"

"No. He isn't going to marry her."

"She's not got enough money, I suppose. She can't help him."

"You must leave him free to marry somebody who can."

He waited to see what she would do. He expected tears, and a storm of jealous rage. But all Maggie did was to sit stiller than ever, while her tears gathered, and fell, and gathered again.

Majendie rose. "I may tell Mr. Gorst that you accept his explanation? That you understand?"

"Am I never to see him again?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Nor write to him?"

"It's better not. It only worries him."

She looked round her, dazed by the destruction of her dream.

"What am I to do, then? Where am I to go to?"

"Stay where you are, if you're comfortable. Your rent will be paid for you, and you shall have a small allowance."

"But who's going to give it me?"

"Mr. Gorst would, if he could. As he cannot, I am."

"You mustn't," said she. "I can't take it from you."

He had approached this point with a horrible dread lest she should misunderstand him.

"Better to take it from me than from him, or anybody else," he said significantly; "if it must be."

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."