He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always believed what she liked. The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would come to-night. And at nine o'clock he came. Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind him of the dejected, anaemic girl who had sat shivering over the fire last September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was lifted from her abasement, glorified. And yet, for all her glory, Maggie, on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower middle class. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty of her deportment. "Have you been ill?" she asked. "Why should I have been ill?" "Because you didn't come." "You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a chronic invalid at that rate." He hadn't realised how often he came. _He_ didn't mark the days with crosses in a calendar. "But you _were_ ill, this time, I know." "How do you know?" The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive, burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in its ways. "I know, because I saw--" she hesitated. "Saw what?" "The light in your window." "My window?" "Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I knew that you were better." "As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill." "Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument. "Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long." "Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all night, too. That's your room." "No, that's my wife's room." Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it." Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him. "That's the spare room," he said, laughing. "Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery, looking on the street. Fancy! That little room." Again she became thoughtful. So did he. "I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?" "Because I saw them." "You can't see them." "Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back."