"I'll do that," promised Maggie. She coloured, and then herself bent forward and kissed Katherine. "I shall like to think of you—and all this—" she said and went.
She was let out into the outer world by the smiling maid-servant. Bryanston Square was dark with purple colour as though the purple curtains inside the house had been snipped off from a general curtained world. There was a star or two and some gaunt trees with black pointing fingers, and here a lighted window and there a shining doorway; behind it all the rumble of a world that disregarded love and death and all the Higher Catechism.
Maggie confronted a policeman.
"Please, can you tell me where the Marble Arch is?" she asked.
"Straight ahead, Miss," he answered, pointing down the street, "you can't miss it."
And she could not. It soon gleamed white ahead of her against the thick folds of the sky. When she saw it her heart raced in front of her, like a pony, suddenly released, kicking its heels. And her thoughts were so strangely wild! The lovely night, yes, purple like Mrs. Mark's curtains and scented oranges, chrysanthemums, boot-polish and candied sugar.—Oh yes! how kind they had been—nice clergyman, fat a little, but young in spite of his white hair, and Aunt Anne in bed under the crucifix struggling and Mr. Crashaw smiling lustfully at Caroline ... The long black streets, strips of silk and the lamps like fat buttons on a coat, there was a cat! Hist! Hist! A streak of black against black ... and the Chapel bell ringing and Thomas' fiery eyes ...
Behind all this confusion there was Martin, Martin, Martin. Creeping nearer and nearer as though he were just behind her, or was it that she was creeping nearer and nearer to him? She did not know, but her heart now was beating so thickly that it was as though giants were wrapping cloth after cloth round it, hot cloths, but their hands were icy cold. No, she was simply excited, desperately, madly excited.
She had never been excited before, and now, with the excitement, there was mingled the strangest hot pain and cold pity. She noticed that now her knees were trembling and that if they trembled much more she would not be able to walk at all.
"Now, Maggie, steady your knees!" she said to herself. But look, the houses now were trembling a little too! Ridiculous those smart houses with their fine doors and white steps to tremble! No, it was her heart, not the houses ...
"Do I look queer?" she thought; "will people be looking at me?"