"Aunt Anne, I'm going away to-morrow," said Maggie. "To-morrow!" Aunt Anne looked up with her strange hostile arrogance. "Oh no, Maggie. You're not well yet." "Mrs. Mark," said Maggie, "the lady I told you about, is coming in a motor to fetch me. She will take me straight to her house, and then I shall go to bed." Aunt Anne said nothing. "You know that it's better for me to go," said Maggie. "We can't live together any more after what happened. You and Aunt Elizabeth have been very very good to me, but you know now that I'm a disappointment. I haven't ever fitted into the life here. I never shall." "The life here is over," said Aunt Anne. "Everything is over--the house is dead. Of course you must go. If you feel anger with me now or afterwards remember that I have lost every hope or desire I ever had. I don't want your pity. I want no one's pity. I wanted once your affection, but I wanted it on my own terms. That was wrong. I do not want your affection any longer; you were never the girl I thought you. You're a strange girl, Maggie, and you will have, I am afraid, a very unhappy life." "No, I will not," said Maggie. "I will have a happy life." "That is for God to say," said Aunt Anne. "No, it is not," said Maggie. "I can make my own happiness. God can't touch it, if I don't let Him." "Maggie, you're blasphemous," said Aunt Anne, but not in anger. "I'm not," said Maggie. "When I came here first I didn't believe in God, but now--I'm not sure. There's something strange, which may be God for all I know. I'm going to find out. If He has the doing of everything then He's taken away all I cared for, and I'm not going to give Him the satisfaction of seeing that it hurt; if He didn't do it, then it doesn't matter." "You'll believe in Him before you die, Maggie," said Aunt Anne. "It's in you, and you won't escape it. I thought it was I who was to bring you to Him, but I was going too fast. The Lord has His own time. You'll come to Him afterwards." "Oh," cried Maggie. "I'm so glad I'm going somewhere where it won't be always religion, where they'll think of something else than the Lord and His Coming. I want real life, banks and motor-cars and shops and clothes and work ..." She stopped suddenly. Aunt Anne was doing what Maggie had never seen her do before, even in the worst bouts of her pain--she was crying ... cold solitary lonely tears that crept slowly, reluctantly down her thin cheeks. "I meant to do well. In everything I have done ill ... Everything has failed in my hands--" Once again, as long before at St. Dreot's, Maggie could do nothing. There was a long miserable silence, then Aunt Anne got up and went away. Next day Katherine came in a beautiful motor-car to fetch Maggie. Maggie had packed her few things. Bound her neck next her skin was the ring with three pearls ...