"I'll come with you, Martin," said Maggie, "as long as you want me, and if you don't want me, later you will again and I'll be waiting for you." He put his arm round her. She crept up close to him, nestled into his coat and put her hand up to his cheek. He bent down his head and they kissed. After that there could be no more argument. What had he not intended to press upon her? With what force arid power had he not planned to persuade her? How he would tell her that he did not love her, that he would not be faithful to her, that he would treat her cruelly. Now it was all gone. With a gesture of almost ironic abandonment he flung away his scruples. It was always so; life was stronger than he. He had tried, in this at least, to behave like a decent man. But life did not want him to be decent ... And how he needed that rest that she gave him! As he felt her close up against him, folded into him with that utterly naif and childish trust that had allured and charmed him on the very first occasion, he felt nothing but a sweet and blessed rest. He would not think of the future. He would not ... HE WOULD NOT. And perhaps all would be well. As he pressed her closer to him, as he felt her lips suddenly strike through the dark, find his check and then his mouth, as he felt her soft confident hand find his and then close and fold inside it like a flower, he wondered whether this once he might not force things to be right. It was time he took things in hand. He could. He must ... He began to whisper to her: "Maggie darling ... It mayn't be bad. I'll find out where this other woman is and she shall divorce me. I'll arrange it all. And we'll go away somewhere where I can work, and we won't allow anybody to interfere. After all, I'm older now. The mess I've been in before is because I always make wrong shots ..." His words ceased. Their hearts were beating too tumultuously together for words to be possible. Maggie did not wish to speak, she could not. She was mingled with him, her heart his, her lips his, her check his ... She did not believe that words would come even though she wished for them. She was utterly happy--so utterly that she was, as it were, numb with happiness. They murmured one another's names. "Martin." "Maggie! ..." At last, dreaming, scarcely knowing what they did, like two children in a dark wood, they wandered towards home. CHAPTER VIII PARADISE Maggie had never really been happy before. She had of course not known this; her adventures in introspection had been very few, besides she had not known what happiness looked like; her father, her uncle, and her aunts were not exactly happy people ...