is
that I believe even now."

"Tell me, dear," said the girl.

* * * * *

The two were sitting out in a delightfully contrived retreat cut out
at the lower end of the double hedge. Above them and on two sides rose
masses of August greenery, hazel and beech, as close as the roof and
walls of a summer-house: the long path ran in green gloom up to the
old brick steps beneath the yews: and before the two girls rested the
pleasant apparatus of tea--silver, china and damask, all the more
delightful from its barbaric contrast with its surroundings.

Maggie looked marvelously well, considering the nervous strain that
had come upon her about Easter-time. She had collapsed altogether, it
seemed, in Easter week itself, and had been for a long rest--one at
her own dear French convent until a week ago, being entirely forbidden
by the nuns to speak of her experiences at all, so soon as they had
heard the rough outline. Mrs. Baxter had spent the time in rather
melancholy travel on the Continent, and was coming back this evening.

"It seems to me now exactly like a very bad dream," said Maggie
pensively, beginning to measure in the tea with a small silver scoop.
"Oh! Mabel; may I tell you exactly what is in my mind: and then we
won't talk of it any more at all?"

"Oh! do," said the girl, with a little comfortable movement.

When the tea had been poured out and the plates set ready to hand,
Maggie began.

* * * * *

"It seems perfectly dreadful of me to have any doubts at all, after all
this; but ... but you don't know how queer it seems. There's a kind of
thick hedge--" she waved a hand illustratively to the hazels beside
her--"a kind of thick hedge between me and Easter--I suppose it's the
illness: the nuns tell me so. Well, it's like that. I can see myself,
and Laurie, and Mr. Cathcart, and all the rest of them, like figures
moving beyond; and they all seem to me to be behaving rather madly, as
if they saw something that I can't see.... Oh! it's hopeless....

"Well, the first theory I have is that these little figures, myself
included, really see something that I can't now: that there really was
something or somebody, which makes them dance about like that. (Yes:
that's not grammar; but you understand, don't you?) Well, I'll come
back to that presently.

"And my next theory is this ... is this"--Maggie sipped her tea
meditatively--"my next theory is that the