"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses to her across the

room.

Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs struggling, and laughed for terror and delight.

Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child."

Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions that brought the blood to her mother's face.

From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne stood linked together by the body of their child.

And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy."

Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her soft lips touch his forehead without parting.

That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously.

"Are you not well, Walter?"

"I've got a splitting headache."

"You'd better take some anti-pyrine."

"I'm damned if I'll take any anti-pyrine."

"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent."

"I beg your pardon."

He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his forehead.

She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her.

She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under his head, and brought him the antipyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad illness, and fear made her kind.

"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be very gentle with him.

"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered.

She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close against his mouth, and kissed it.

She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him without a word.

He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed.

IT

a cross.

CHAPTER XXV

T was Friday evening, the Friday that followed that Sunday when Majendie's hope had risen at the touch of his wife's hand, and died again under her repulse. Friday was the day which Maggie Forrest marked in her calendar sometimes with a query and sometimes with The query stood for "Will he come?" The cross meant "He came." To-night there was no cross, though Maggie had brushed her hair till it shone again, and put on her best dress, and laid out her little table for tea, and sat there waiting, like the ladies in those houses where he went; like Mrs. Hannay or Mrs. Ransome who bought her embroidery; or like that grand lady with the title, who had come with Mrs. Ransomethe lady who had bought more embroidery than anybody, the scent on whose clothes was enough, Maggie said, to take your breath away.

Maggie loved her tea-table. She embroidered beautiful linen cloths for it. Every Friday it was decked as an altar dedicated to the service of a god-in case he

came.

He hadn't come. It was past eight, yet Maggie left the altar standing with the cloth on it, and waited. It would be terrible if the god should come and find no altar. Once, even at this late hour, he had come.

The house was very quiet. Mrs. Morse was out marketing, and Maggie was alone. Friday was market night in Scale. She wondered if he would remember that, and

come. Her heart beat violently with the thought that he might be beginning to come late. The others had come late when they began to love her.

She had forgotten them, or only cared to remember such of their ways as threw light on Mr. Majendie's. For he was, as yet, obscure to her.

It seemed to her that a new thing had come to her, a thing marvellously and divinely new, this, that she should be waiting, counting hours, and marking days on calendars, measuring her own pulses with a hand, now on her heart, now on her throbbing forehead, and wondering what could be the matter with her. Maggie was sixand-twenty; but ever since she was nine she had been waiting and wondering. For there always had been somebody whom Maggie loved insanely. First it was the little boy who lived in the house opposite, at home. He had abandoned Maggie's society, and broken her heart on the day when he "went into trousers." Then it was the big boy in her father's shop who gave her chocolates one day and snubbed her cruelly the next. Then it was the young man who came to tune the piano in the back parlour. Then the arithmetic master in the little boarding-school they sent her to. And then (for Maggie's infatuations rose rapidly in the social scale) it was one of the young gentlemen who "studied" at the Vicarage. He was engaged to Maggie for a whole term; and he went away and jilted her, so that Maggie's heart was broken a second time. At last, on an evil day for Maggie, it was one of the gentlemen (not so young) staying up at "the big house." He watched for Maggie in dark lanes, and followed her through the fields at evening, till one evening he made her turn and follow her heart and him. And so Maggie went on her predestined way.

For after him there was the gentleman who came to Madame Ponting's, and after him, Mr. Gorst, who came to Evans's, and after Mr. Gorst Last year Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and driven by the wind.

As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went from flame to flame; for the hours when there was nobody to love simply dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. She left off living when she had to leave off loving. To be sure there was always Mr. Mumford. He was a tobacconist, and he lived over the shop in a house fronting the pier, a unique and dominant situation. And he was prepared to overlook the past and make Maggie his wife and mistress of the house fronting the pier. Unfortunately, Maggie did not love him. You couldn't love Mr. Mumford. You could only be sorry for him.

But though Maggie went from flame to flame, there were long periods of placidity when she loved nothing but her work, and was as good as gold. Maggie's father wouldn't believe it. He had never forgiven her, not even when the doctor told him that there was no sense in which the poor girl could be held responsible; they should have looked after her better, that was all. Maggie's father, the grocer, did not deal in smooth, extenuating phrases. He called such madness sin. So did Maggie in her hours of peace and sanity. She was terrified when she felt it coming on, and hid her face from her