Maggie an unnatural
kind of name. He had an irritating habit of never finishing his
sentences, and the people he knew answered him in the same inconclusive
fashion. The pool in the cellar naturally annoyed him, but he did
nothing very practical about it, allowed it to remain there, and
discussed it with a Professor of Chemistry. Beyond this Maggie could
not penetrate. The young man was apparently in love with a lady much
older than himself, who wore pince-nez, but it was an arid kind of love
in which the young man discovered motives and symptoms with the same
dexterous surprise with which he discovered newts and tadpoles in the
cellar-pond. Maggie bravely attacked Mr. Magnus.

"Why didn't he have men in to clear up the pond and lay a new floor?"
she asked.

"That was just the point," said Mr. Magnus. "He couldn't."

"Why couldn't he?"

"Weakness of character and waiting to see what would happen."

"He talked too much," she answered decisively. "But are there houses in
London with ponds in them?"

"Lots," said Mr. Magnus. "Only the owners of the houses don't know it.
There is a big pond in the Chapel. That's what Thurston came out of."

This was beyond Maggie altogether. An agreeable thing, however, about
Mr. Magnus was that he did not mind when you disliked his work. He
seemed to expect that you would not like it. He was certainly a very
unconceited man.

A more important and more interesting theme was Mr. Magnus' reason for
being where he was. What was he doing here? What led him to the Chapel
doors, he being in no way a religious man?

"It was like this," he told her. "I was living in Golders Green, and
suddenly one morning I was tired of the country that wasn't country,
and the butcher boy and the postman. So I moved as far into the centre
of things as I could and took a room in St. Martin's Lane close at hand
here. Then one evening I was wandering about, a desolate Sunday evening
when the town is given over to cats. I suddenly came across the Chapel.
I like going into London churches by chance, there's always something
interesting, something you wouldn't expect. The Chapel simply
astonished me. I couldn't imagine what they were all about, it wasn't
the ordinary London congregation, it was almost the ordinary London
service and yet not quite; there was an air of expectation and even
excitement which is most unusual in a London church. Then there was
Warlock. Of course one could see at once that he was an