"I can't help thinking. You've been so good to me."
"I should try and forget that, too, a little more, if I were you. I'm only paying some of Mr. Gorst's debts for him."
The name called up no colour to her cheek. Maggie had forgotten Gorst, and all he had done for her.
"And you're paying me back."
She shook her head. "I can't ever pay you back."
Poor little girl! Was that what her mind was always running on?
There was silence again between them. And then Majendie looked at Maggie.
She was sitting very still, as if she were waiting for something, and yet content. Her eyes were swimming, as if with tears; but there were no tears in them. Her face was reddening, as if with shame, but there was no shame in it. She seemed to be listening, dazed and enchanted, to her own secret, the running whisper of her blood. Her lips were parted, and, as he looked at her, they closed and opened again in sympathy with the delicate tremors that moved her throat under her rounded chin. In her brooding look there was neither reminiscence nor foreboding; it was the look of a creature surrendered wholly to her hour.
As he looked at her his nerves sent an arrow of warning, a hot tremor darting from heart to brain.
"I must go now, Maggie," he said.