Even now, at the very instant of her triumph, she deceived herself in nothing. There were many difficulties ahead for her. She had still to deal with Paul: Martin was not a perfect character, nor would he suddenly become one. Above all that strange sense of being a captive in a world that did not understand her, some one curious and odd and alien—that would not desert her. That also was true of Martin. It was true—strangely true—of so many of the people she had known—of the aunts, Uncle Mathew, Mr. Magnus, of Paul and of Grace, of Mr. Toms, and even perhaps of Thurston and Amy Warlock—all captives in a strange country, trying to find the escape, each in his or her own fashion, back to the land of their birth.
But the land was there. Just as the lion, whose roar very faintly she could hear through the thick walls, remembered in his cage the jungles and mountains of his happiness, so was she aware of hers. The land was there, the fight to get hack to it was real.
She smiled to herself, looking back on the years. Many people would have said that she had had no very happy time since that sudden moment of her father's death, but it did not seem to her, in retrospect, unhappy. There had been unhappy times, tragic times, but life was always bringing forward some magnificent moment, some sudden flash of splendour that made up for all the rest. How could you be bitter about people when you were all in the same box, all as ignorant, as blind, as eager to do well, as fallible, as brave, as mistaken?
The thoughts slipped dimly through her mind. She was too happy to trace them truly. She had never been one for conscious philosophy.
Nevertheless she did not doubt but that life was worth while, that there was something immortal in her, and that the battle was good to fight—but what it really came to was that she loved Martin, and that at last some one needed her, that she need never be lonely any more.
Mrs. Bolitho stepped in with the tea.
"I'll take it in to him," Maggie said, standing up and stretching out her arms for the tray.
The woman looked at her and gave a little "Ah!" of satisfaction, as though, at length, she saw in Maggie's eyes that for—which she had been searching.
"Why, I do believe," she said, "that walk's done 'ee good."
"I do believe," Maggie said, laughing, "it has."