t I? I don't want to be selfish, but I can begin
for myself now. I have a little money of my own--and I MUST make my own
way. I don't want to be selfish," she repeated, "but I must be free. I
don't understand Aunt Anne. She never seems to care for me. I want to
do everything for her I can, but I don't want to be under any one ever
any more."

She was so young when she said this that he was suddenly moved to an
affectionate fatherly tenderness--but he knew her now too well to show
it.

"No, you mustn't be selfish," he answered her almost drily. "We can't
lead our lives quite alone, you know--every step we take we affect some
one somewhere. Your aunt doesn't want your liberty--she wants your
affection."

"She wants to make me religious," Maggie brought out, staring at Mr.
Magnus.

"Ah, if you see that, you don't understand her," he answered. "How
should you--yet? She cares so deeply for her religion that she wishes
naturally any one whom she loves to share it with her. But if you
don't--"

"If you don't?" cried Maggie, springing up from her seat and facing him.

"I'm sure she would wish to influence no one," he continued gravely.
"You've seen for yourself how apart her life is. She is too conscious
of the necessity for her own liberty--"

"It isn't liberty, it's slavery," Maggie caught him up passionately.
"Do you suppose I haven't watched all these weeks? What does her
religion do but shut her off from everything and everybody? Is she kind
to Aunt Elizabeth? No, she isn't, and you know it. Would she care if we
were all of us buried in the ruins of this house to-morrow? Not for a
single moment. And it's her religion. I hate religion. I hate it! ...
and since I've been in this house I've hated it more and more. You
don't know what it was like with father. I don't think of it now or
talk of it, but I know what it made of HIM. And now it's the same here,
only it takes them in a different way. But it's the same in the end--no
one who's religious cares for any one. And they'd make the same of me.
Aunt Anne would--the same as she's made of Aunt Elizabeth. They haven't
said much yet, but they're waiting for the right moment, and then
they'll spring it upon me. It's in the house, it's in the rooms, it's
in the very furniture. It's as though father had come back and was
driving me into it. And I want to be free, I want to lead my own life,
to make it myself. I don't want to think about God or Heaven or Hell. I
don't care