won't leave go?" Her eyes shone towards her friend's in the
twilight. "You _will_ go on?"

"_You_ must go on."

"Ah--how?"

"Believing that he'll be all right."

"Oh, Aggy, he was devoted to Winny. And if the child dies----"

CHAPTER SIX

The child died three days later. Milly came over to Agatha with the
news.

She said it had been an awful shock, of course. She'd been dreading
something like that for him. But he'd taken it wonderfully. If he came
out of it all right she _would_ believe in what she called Agatha's
"thing."

He did come out of it all right. His behaviour was the crowning proof,
if Milly wanted more proof, of his sanity. He went up to London and made
all the arrangements for his sister. When he returned he forestalled
Milly's specious consolations with the truth. It was better, he told
her, that the dear little girl should have died, for there was distinct
brain trouble anyway. He took it as a sane man takes a terrible
alternative.

Weeks passed. He had grown accustomed to his own sanity and no longer
marvelled at it.

And still without intermission Agatha went on. She had been so far
affected by Milly's fright (that was the worst of Milly's knowing) that
she held on to Harding Powell with a slightly exaggerated intensity. She
even began to give more and more time to him, she who had made out that
time in this process did not matter. She was afraid of letting go,
because the consequences (Milly was perpetually reminding her of the
consequences) of letting go would be awful.

For Milly kept her at it. Milly urged her on. Milly, in Milly's own
words, sustained her. She praised her; she praised the Secret, praised
the Power. She said you could see how it worked. It was tremendous; it
was inexhaustible. Milly, familiarised with its working, had become a
fanatical believer in the Power. But she had her own theory. She knew of
course that they were all, she and Agatha and poor Harding, dependent on
the Power, that it was the Power that did it, and not Agatha. But Agatha
was _their_ one link with it, and if the link gave way where were they?
Agatha felt that Milly watched her and waylaid her; that she was
suspicious of failures and of intermissions; that she wondered; that she
peered and pried. Milly would, if she could, have stuck her fingers into
what she called the machinery of the thing. Its vagueness baffled and
even annoyed her, for her mind was limited; it loved and was at home
wi