`I am having a great holiday, am I not?' said Maggie.`Lucy is like a fairy godmother: she has turned me from a drudge into a princess in no time.I do nothing but indulge myself all day long, and she always finds out what I want before I know it myself.'
`I'm sure she is the happier for having you, then,' said Philip.`You must be better than a whole menagerie of pets to her.And you look well - you are benefiting by the change.'
Artificial conversation of this sort went on a little while, till Lucy, determined to put an end to it, exclaimed with a good imitation of annoyance that she had forgotten something, and was quickly out of the room.
In a moment Maggie and Philip leaned forward and the hands were clasped again, with a look of sad contentment like that of friends who meet in the memory of recent sorrow.
`I told my brother I wished to see you, Philip - I asked him to release me from my promise, and he consented.'
Maggie, in her impulsiveness, wanted Philip to know at once the position they must hold towards each other - but she checked herself.The things that had happened since he had spoken of his love for her were so painful that she shrank from being the first to allude to them.It seemed almost like an injury towards Philip even to mention her brother - her brother who had insulted him.But he was thinking too entirely of her to be sensitive on any other point at that moment.
`Then we can at least be friends, Maggie? There is nothing to hinder that now?'
`Will not your father object?' said Maggie, withdrawing her hand.
`I should not give you up on any ground but your own wish, Maggie,'
said Philip, colouring.`There are points on which I should always resist my father, as I used to tell you.That is one.'
`Then there is nothing to hinder our being friends, Philip - seeing each other and talking to each other while I am here - I shall soon go away again.I mean to go very soon - to a new situation.'
`Is that inevitable, Maggie?'
`Yes: I must not stay here long.It would unfit me for the life I must begin again at last.I can't live in dependence - I can't live with my brother - though he is very good to me.He would like to provide for me - but that would be intolerable to me.'
Philip was silent a few moments, and then said in that high, feeble voice which with him indicated the resolute suppression of emotion:--`Is there no other alternative, Maggie? Is that life away from those who love you, the only one you will allow yourself to look forward to?'
`Yes, Philip,' she said, looking at him pleadingly, as if she entreated him to believe that she was compelled to this course.`At least, as things are.I don't know what may be in years to come.But I begin to think there can never come much happiness to me from loving: I have always had so much pain mingled with it.I wish I could make myself a world outside it, as men do.'
`Now, you are returning to your old thought in a new form, Maggie -the thought I used to combat,' said Philip, with a slight tinge of bitterness.
`You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain.I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature.What would become of me, if I tried to escape from pain? Scorn and cynicism would be my only opium - unless I could fall into some kind of conceited madness, and fancy myself a favourite of Heaven, because I am not a favourite with men.'
The bitterness had taken on some impetuosity as Philip went on speaking:
the words were evidently an outlet for some immediate feeling of his own, as well as an answer to Maggie.There was a pain pressing on him at that moment.He shrank with proud delicacy from the faintest allusion to the words of love - of plighted love that had passed between them.It would have seemed to him like reminding Maggie of a promise; it would have had for him something of the baseness of compulsion.He could not dwell on the fact that he himself had not changed; for that too would have had the air of an appeal.His love for Maggie was stamped, even more than the rest of his experience, with the exaggerated sense that he was an exception - that she, that every one, saw him in the light of an exception.
But Maggie was conscience-stricken.
`Yes, Philip,' she said with her childish contrition when he used to chide her, `You are right, I know.I do always think too much of my own feelings, and not enough of others' - not enough of yours.I had need have you always to find fault with me and teach me - so many things have come true that you used to tell me.'
Maggie was resting her elbow on the table, leaning her head on her hand and looking at Philip with half-penitent dependent affection, as she said this; while he was returning her gaze with an expression that, to her consciousness, gradually became less vague - became charged with a specific recollection.
Had his mind flown back to something that she now remembered? -something about a lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder:
it gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened the evening before.She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes accompanies a sudden mental pang.
`What is the matter, Maggie? Has something happened?' Philip said, in inexpressible anxiety - his imagination being only too ready to weave everything that was fatal to them both.
`No - nothing,' said Maggie, rousing her latent will.Philip must not have that odious thought in his mind: she would banish it from her own.
`Nothing,' she repeated, `except in my own mind.You used to say I should feel the effect of my starved life, as you called it, and I do.I am too eager in my enjoyment of music and all luxuries, now they are come to me.'