"I can work," she said. "I can pay a little now."
"No, no. Never mind about that. Keep it—keep all you earn."
"I can't keep it. I'll pay you back again. I'll work my fingers to the bone."
"Oh, not for me" he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go.
Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour.
"Yes," she said, "for you."
CHAPTER XXII
Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie's door. In justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the passionate, perverted creature. And yet there was a sense in which Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent. Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him to the vision. And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child, and feverish from her hurt. He had asked her what she had wanted with Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was "to help him."
He said to himself that he wouldn't be in Gorst's place for a good deal, to have that on his conscience.