During the next fortnight the dominant element in the situation was Grace's terror. Skeaton was already beginning to forget the story of the suicide. Maggie was marked for ever now as "queer and strange," but Paul was not blamed; he was rather, pitied and even liked the more. But Grace could not forget. Maggie intended perhaps to murder her in revenge for her uncle's death; well, then, she must be murdered ... She would not leave her brother. She could not consider the future. She knew that she could not live in the same house with Maggie for long, but she would not go and Maggie would not go ... What was to happen?
Poor Grace, the tortures that she suffered during those weeks will not be understood by persons with self-confidence and a hearty contempt for superstition.
She paid the penalty now for the ghosts of her childhood—and no one could help her.
Maggie saw that Paul was, with every day, increasingly unhappy. He had never been trained to conceal his feelings, and although he tried now he succeeded very badly. He would come into her room in the early morning hours and lie down beside her. He would put his arms around her and kiss her, and, desperately, as though he were doing it for a wager, make love to her. She felt, desperate also on her side, that she could comfort and make him happy, if only he would want something less from her than passion. But always after an hour or a little more, he crept away again to his own room, disappointed, angered, frustrated. These hours were the stranger because, during the day, he showed her nothing of this mood, but was kindly and friendly and distant.
She would have done anything for him; she tried sometimes to be affectionate to him, but always, at once, he turned upon her with a hungry, impassioned look ...
She knew, without any kind of doubt, that the only way that she could make him happy again was to leave him. His was not a nature to brood, for the rest of his days, on something that he had lost.
Only once did he make any allusion to the coming Revival services. He burst out one day, at luncheon: "The most scandalous thing!" he said. "We had them here once, years ago, and the harm they did no one would believe. I've been to Tamar about it; he can do nothing, unless they disturb the public peace, of course. He had the impertinence to tell me that they behaved very well last time they were here!"
"I don't like that man," said Grace. "I don't believe he makes his money properly. Look at the clothes Mrs. Tamar wears! What I mean is, I don't like his wife at all."
"It's very hard," said Paul, his voice trembling with indignation, "that when men and women have been working for years to bring Christ into the hearts of mankind that mountebanks and hypocrites should be allowed to undo the work in the space of a night. I know this man Thurston. They've had letters in the Church Times about him." "Fancy!" said Grace, "and still he dares show his face."
"But do they really do so much harm?" asked Maggie. "I should have thought if they only came once for a week in ten years they couldn't make any real effect on anybody—"