eady pledged her word to him on something much more final: "No," she
thought to herself, "when the moment comes for me to leave everything,
I will go, but he shall know that I am not doing it cheaply, simply for
an evening's fun." He felt something of that too, and did not try to
persuade her. He hugged his unselfishness; for the first time in his
life it seemed to him that he wanted to follow somebody else's will;
with the other women it had been so different, if they had not wanted
to obey him he had left them. But indeed all through these three weeks
they were discovering themselves and one another, and, as though it
were part of the general conspiracy, only the best part of themselves.
On the top of the 'bus, as they sat close together, their hands locked
under his overcoat, the world bumping and jolting, and jogging about
their feet, as though indeed public houses and lamp-posts and cinemas
and town halls and sweet-shops were always jumping up tiptoe to see
whether they couldn't catch a glimpse of the lovers, Martin and Maggie
felt that they were really divine creatures, quite modestly divine, but
nevertheless safe from all human ravages and earthly failings, wicked
and cowardly thoughts, and ambitions and desires.

Indeed, during those three weeks Maggie saw nothing of Martin's
weaknesses, his suspicions and dreads, his temper and self-abasement.
The nobility that Martin had in him was true nobility, his very
weaknesses came from his sharp consciousness of what purity and
self-sacrifice and asceticism really were, and that they were indeed
the only things for man to live by. During those weeks he saw so truly
the sweetness and fidelity and simplicity of Maggie that his conscience
was killed, his scruples were numbed. He did not want during those
weeks any sensual excitement, any depravity, any license. A quiet and
noble asceticism seemed to him perfectly possible. He burst out once to
Maggie with: "I can't conceive, Maggie, why I ever thought life
complicated. You've straightened everything out for me, made all the
troubles at home seem nothing, shown me what nonsense it was wanting
the rotten things I was always after."

But Maggie had no eloquence in reply--she could not make up fine
sentences; it embarrassed her dreadfully to tell him even that she
loved him, and when he was sentimental it was her habit to turn it off
with a joke if she could. She wanted terribly to ask him sometimes what
he had meant when he