"Oh, no!" Magda spoke quickly. "I shouldn't return under a vow of
penitence. There are working sisters attached to the community who go
about amongst the sick and poor in the slums. I should join as a working
sister if I went back."

Gillian stared at her in amazement. Magda devoting her life to good
works seemed altogether out of the picture! She began to feel that
the whole affair was getting too complicated for her to handle, and as
usual, when in a difficulty, she put the matter up to Lady Arabella.

The latter, with her accumulated wisdom of seventy years, saw more
clearly than the younger woman, although even she hardly understood
that sense of the deadly emptiness and failure of her life which had
overwhelmed Magda since her return to Friars' Holm. But the old woman
realised that she had passed through a long period of strain, and that,
now the reaction had come, the Vallincourt blood in her might drive her
into almost any extreme of conduct.

"If only Michael were on the spot!" she burst out irritably. "I own I'm
disappointed in the man! I was so sure six months would bring him to his
senses."

"I know," assented Gillian miserably. "It's--it's--the most hopeless
state of things imaginable!"

Lady Arabella's interview with Magda herself proved unproductive.

"Have you written to Michael?" she demanded.

"Written to him?" A flash of the old defiant spirit sounded in Magda's
voice. "No, nor shall I."

"Don't be a fool, child. He's probably learned something during this
last twelve months--as well as you. Don't let pride get in your way
now."

"It's not pride. Marraine, I never knew--I never thought----Look at me!
What have I to give Michael now? Have you forgotten that he's an artist
and that beauty means everything to him?"

"Well?"

"'Well!'" Magda held out her hands. "Can't you see that I'm changed?
. . . Michael wouldn't want me to pose for him as Circe now!"

"He wanted you for a wife--not a model, my dear. You can buy models at
so much the hour."

"Oh, Marraine! You won't understand----"

Lady Arabella took the slender, work-roughened hands in hers.

"Perhaps I understand better than you think," she said quietly. "There
are other ways of assessing life than merely in terms of beauty. And
you can believe this, too: you've lost nothing from the point of view
of looks that a few months of normal healthy life won't set right.
Moreover, if you'd grown as plain as a pikestaff, I don't think Mich