When he stood up, his knees shook under him.
"Not yet," said Maggie. "I'm all alone in the house, and I'm afraid."
"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said roughly. "I've got to go."
He strode towards the door while Maggie stared after him in terror. She understood nothing but that he was going to leave her. What had she done to drive him away?
"You're ill," she cried, as she followed him, panting in her fright.
He pushed her back gently from the threshold.
"Don't be a little fool, Maggie. I'm not ill."
Out in the street, five yards from Maggie's door, he battled with a vision of her that almost drove him back again. "It was I who was a fool," he thought. "I shall go back. Why not? She is predestined. Why not I as well as anybody else?"
All the way to his own door an insistent, abominable voice kept calling to him, "Why not? Why not?"
He went with noiseless footsteps up his own stairs, past the dark doors below, past Edith's open door where the lamp still burned brightly beyond the threshold. At Anne's door he paused.