he wondered that she had not
seen many things, warnings, portents, whatever you please to call them.
But for three weeks she saw nothing but Martin, and for three weeks he
saw nothing but Maggie.

She began her career of defiance at once by informing Aunt Anne that
she was now going out every morning to do her shopping. Considering the
confinement to the house that her life had always been, this was such a
declaration of independence as those walls had never encountered
before. But Aunt Anne never turned one of her shining neatly ordered
hairs. "Shopping, my dear?" she asked. "Yes," said Maggie, looking her
full in the face. "What sort of shopping, dear?" "Oh, I don't know,"
said Maggie. "There's always something every day."

Maggie had an uncomfortable feeling that her aunt had in some way
mysteriously defeated her by this sudden abandonment of all protest,
and for a moment the mysterious house closed around her, with its
shadows and dim corners and the little tinkling Chapel hell in the
heart of it. But the thought of Martin dissolved the shadows, and off
she went.

They agreed to meet every morning at eleven o'clock outside Hatchards,
the bookseller's, in Piccadilly. They chose that place because you
could look into a bookseller's window for quite a long time without
seeming odd, and there were so many people passing that no one noticed
you. Their habit then was to walk to the corner of the Green Park and
there climb on to the top of a motor omnibus and go as far as they
could within the allotted time. Maggie never in after life found those
streets again. They had gone, she supposed, to Chelsea, to St. John's
Wood, to the heart of the city, to the Angel, Islington, to Westminster
and beyond, but places during those three weeks had no names, streets
had no stones, houses no walls, and human figures no substantiality.
They tried on one or two occasions to go by Tube, but they missed the
swing of the open air, the rush of the wind, and their independence of
men and women. Often he tried to persuade her to stay with him for
luncheon and the afternoon, but she was wiser than he.

"No," she said, "everything depends on keeping them quiet. A little
later on it will be lovely. You must leave that part of it to me."

She promised him definitely that soon they should go to a matinee
together, but she would not give her word about a whole evening. In
some strange way she was frightened of the evening, although she had
alr