hood. She struck
even Susie's dull imagination as wonderful.

Half an hour later Aggie bent her aching back again over her work. She had
turned a stiff, set face to Susie as she parted from her. John had come
and gone, and it had not been awkward in the least. He was kind and
courteous (time and prosperity had improved him), but he had, as Susie
said, no eyes for any one but his wife.

As Aggie worked she was assailed by many thoughts and many memories. Out
of the past there rose a sublime and patient face. It smiled at her above
a butchery of little lambs.

Yes, Susie was right about her John. There was no weak spot in him. He had
not a great intellect, but he had a great heart and a great will. Aggie
remembered how once, in her thoughtful maiden days, she had read in one of
the vicar's books a saying which had struck her at the time, for the vicar
had underlined it twice. "If there is aught spiritual in man, it is the
Will." She had not thought of John as a very spiritual person. She had
dimly divined in him the possibility of strong passions, such passions as
make shipwreck of men's lives. And here was Arthur--he, poor dear, would
never be shipwrecked, for he hadn't one strong passion in him; he had only
a few weak little impulses, incessantly frustrating a will weaker than
them all. She remembered how her little undeveloped soul, with its
flutterings and strugglings after the immaterial, had been repelled by the
large presence of the natural man. It had been afraid to trust itself to
his strength, lest its wings should suffer for it. It had not been afraid
to trust itself to Arthur; and his weakness had made it a wingless thing,
dragged down by the suffering of her body.

She said to herself, "If I had known John was like that--"

She stopped her brain before it could answer for her! "You wouldn't be
sitting here now stitching at that coat."

She stitched on till she could see to stitch no more; for tears came and
blinded her eyes, and fell upon the coat.

That was just after she had kissed it.

X

It was Easter, three weeks after Susie's visit; and Arthur was going away
for a fortnight, his first real holiday in seven years. For some time he
had been lengthening out his office hours, and increasing his salary, by
adding night to day. And now he had worn himself out by his own ferocious
industry. He knew, and Aggie knew, that he was in for a bad illness if he
didn't get away, and at once. He had wr