"Paul, did you mean Grace to come with us to Little Harben in August?" "Of course, dear. She has nowhere else to go." "Well, she mustn't come. I've given way about everything since we were married. I'm not going to give way about this. That month we are to be alone." "Alone!" said Paul. "But we're always alone." "We're never alone," said Maggie, standing with her legs apart and her hands behind her back. "I don't mean to complain about Grace. She's been very good to me, I know, and I've got much to be grateful for. All the same she's not coming to Little Harben. She's got you all the rest of the year. She can give you up for a month." "But Maggie--" said Paul. "No, I'm quite determined about this. I may be a child and a fool, but I know what I'm talking about this time. You're not happy. You never talk to me as you used to. There are many things we ought to have out, but Grace is always there in the daytime and at night you're too tired. If we go on like this we'll be strangers in another six months." He turned round to stare at her, and she saw in his eyes an odd excited light. "Maggie," he said in a low voice. "If we go alone to Little Harben does it mean that you think--you can begin to love me?" She turned her eyes away. "I don't know. I don't know about myself, I only know that I want us to be happy and I want us to be close together--as we were before we were married. It's all gone wrong somehow; I'm sure it's my fault. It was just the same with my father and my aunts. I couldn't say the things to them I wanted to, the things I really felt, and so I lost them. I'm going to lose you in the same way if I'm not careful." He still looked at her strangely. At last, with a sigh, he turned back to his desk. "I'll speak to Grace," he said. That night the storm broke. During supper Grace was very quiet. Maggie, watching her, knew that Paul had spoken to her. Afterwards in the study the atmosphere was electric. Grace read The Church Times, Paul the Standard, Maggie Longfellow's Golden Legend, which she thought foolish. Grace looked up. "So I understand, Maggie, that you don't want me to come with you and Paul this summer?" Maggie, her heart, in spite of herself, thumping in her breast, faced a Grace transfigured by emotion. That countenance, heavily, flabbily good-natured, the eyes if stupid, also kind, was now marked and riven with a flaming anger. But Maggie was no coward. With her old gesture of self-command she stilled her heart. "I'm very sorry, Grace," she said. "But it's only for a month. I want to be alone with Paul." Grace, her hands fumbling on the arms of her chair as though she were blind, rose.