y. The finest first, then all that was left of her. That was her
unique merit, what marked her from the rest.

Majendie, she divined by instinct, had recognised her quality. He was the
only one who had. And he had asked nothing of her. She would have lived
miserably for Charlie Gorst. She would have died with joy for Mr.
Majendie. And Maggie feared death worse than life, however miserable.

But there was something in her love for Majendie that revealed it as a
thing apart. It had not made her idle. Her passion for Mr. Majendie
blossomed and flowered, and ran over in beautiful embroidery. That
industry ministered to it. Her heart was set on having those little sums
to send him every week; for that was the only way she could hope to
approach him of her own movement. She loved the curt little notes in
which Majendie acknowledged the receipt of each postal order. She tied
them together with white ribbon, and treasured them in a little box under
lock and key. All the time, she knew he had a wife and child, but her
fancy refused to recognise Mrs. Majendie's existence. It allowed him to
have a child, but not a wife. She knew that he spent his Saturdays and
Sundays with them at his home. He never came, or could come, on a
Saturday or Sunday, and Maggie refused to consider the significance of
this. She simply lived from Friday to Friday. No other day in the week
existed for Maggie. All other days heralded it, or followed in its train.
The blessed memory of it rested upon Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday and
Thursday glowed and vibrated with its coming; Mondays and Tuesdays were
forlorn and grey. Terrible were the days which followed a Friday when he
had not come.

He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a
comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not
coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not
come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like
to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always
believed what she liked.

The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would
come to-night.

And at nine o'clock he came.

Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind
him of the dejected, anaemic girl who had sat shivering over the fire last
September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was
lifted from her abasement, glorified. And yet,