for all her glory, Maggie,
on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower
middle class. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday
afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her
chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on
Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty
of her deportment.

"Have you been ill?" she asked.

"Why should I have been ill?"

"Because you didn't come."

"You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a
chronic invalid at that rate."

He hadn't realised how often he came. _He_ didn't mark the days with
crosses in a calendar.

"But you _were_ ill, this time, I know."

"How do you know?"

The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive,
burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in
its ways.

"I know, because I saw--" she hesitated.

"Saw what?"

"The light in your window."

"My window?"

"Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve
o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I
knew that you were better."

"As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill."

"Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument.

"Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long."

"Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in
the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all
night, too. That's your room."

"No, that's my wife's room."

Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little
girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it."
Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him.

"That's the spare room," he said, laughing.

"Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery,
looking on the street. Fancy! That little room."

Again she became thoughtful. So did he.

"I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?"

"Because I saw them."

"You can't see them."

"Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back."

He hadn't thought of the alley. Nobody ever passed that way after dark;
it ended in a blind wall.

"What were you doing there at twelve o'clock at night?"

He looked for signs of shame and confusion on Maggie's face. But Maggie's
face was