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 six-and-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.