ot connect that with
her aunt. The room was cold and, she felt, of infinite space. The smell
of the wine and the medicine made her shy and awkward as though she
were somewhere where she should not be.

There came a little sigh, and then a very quiet, tired voice.

"Maggie, is that you?"

"Yes, Aunt Anne."

She came very close to the bed, and suddenly, as though a curtain had
been drawn back, she could see her aunt's large eyes and white sharp
face.

"It was very good of you, dear, to come. I felt ashamed to wake you up
at such an hour, but I wanted you. I felt that only you must be with me
to-night. It was a call from God. I felt that it must be obeyed. Sit
down, dear. There, on that chair. You're not cold, are you?"

Maggie sat down, gathering her dressing-gown close about her. She was
not even now drawn right out of her dream, and the room seemed
fantastic, to rise and fall a little, and to be filled with sound, just
out of hearing. For a time she was so sleepy that she nodded on her
chair, and the green lamp swelled and quivered and the very bed seemed
to sway in the dark, but soon the cold air cleared her head, and she
was wide awake, staring before her at the grey window-panes. Her aunt
did not for a long time speak again. Maggie sat there her mind a maze
of the Chapel, old Crashaw, Miss Avies, and Martin. Slowly the cold
crept into her feet and her hands, but her head now was burning hot.
Then suddenly her aunt began to talk in a dreamy rather lazy voice, not
her natural daily tone which was always very sharp and clear. She
talked on and on; sometimes her sentences were confused and unfinished,
sometimes they seemed to Maggie to have no meaning; once or twice the
voice dropped so low that Maggie did not catch the words, but always
there was especial urgency behind the carelessness as though every word
were being spoken for a listener's benefit--a listener who sat perhaps
with pencil and notebook somewhere in the dark behind them.

"So sorry ... so sorry, Maggie dear ... so sorry," the words ran up and
down. "I hadn't meant to take you away before the service was over.
Elizabeth could have ... sometimes my pain is very bad and I have to
lie down, you know. But it's nothing--nothing really--only I'm glad,
rather, that you should share all our little troubles, because then
you'll know us better, won't you? Dear Maggie, there's been something
between us all this time, hasn't there? Ever since our first
meetin